The St Mungo’s investigation says that mental health and outreach professionals reported that mental health problems can make people reluctant to engage with street outreach services. Psychosis, delusional disorders and paranoia lead people to mistrust street outreach workers and other professionals. Similarly, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder can contribute to a lack of motivation and sense of hopelessness around addressing housing situations.

This means that outreach workers needs training in working assertively with clients, that is working with people who may not engage co-operatively but may be at risk of hospitalisation if they do not engage.

This handout tells you a bit about ACT: Assertive Community Therapy, which was designed to meet this need and utilises multidisciplinary teams including those with specialisms in housing and substance abuse as well as mental health issues: act-a-social-approach-to-treatignschiz

This one looks at some potentially useful evaluation points linked to ACT: evaluating-act

Finally just in case its useful…compare-the-use-of-drugs-and-act-as-treatments-of-schizophreniase it is useful, this one compares drugs treatments and ACT: