Marcel Slockers

16 Chapter 1 an aid programme, while 2,982 of the 3,459 adult homeless people had reached the stable mix. 29 1,896 young homeless people under the age of 23 had followed an individual aid programme, of whom 658 eventually reached the stable mix. After 2014, the Action Plan for Social Support and the financing of housing projects was not structurally continued as a result of spending cuts in long-term care. The local authorities, however, remained focused on the prevention of homelessness by introducing special local neighbourhood teams and the Social Support Act (known in Dutch as the WMO). Since then, workers at special help desks, where local people can turn with their problems, and professionals such as GPs alert the local neighbourhood teams about debt problems and help to prevent pending homelessness. In this way, healthcare organisations are able to provide long-term care financed by the local government, for example to people with an intellectual disability. Nowadays, after the implementation of the Action Plan for Social Support was completed, homeless people in Rotterdam can turn to local government desks and ask for help. This desk is called Centraal Onthaal and conducts intake interviews and problem identifica- tions. 30 Other cities have similar systems. With the information collected in the intake, possible solutions are considered, to prevent homelessness and to find accommodation in people’s own network. 8 Evictions account for fifty per cent of the intake cases. A study in 2016, commissioned by the Pauluskerk, shows that the vast majority of the inhabitants of Rotterdam support the idea that local authorities should provide adequate care to homeless people, and 89% believe that no single human being should sleep outside. 31 What is being done to help homeless people? Good care for homeless people not only implies healthcare but also social-medical care. A combination of accessible healthcare by street nurses and street doctors, accessible social care and basic facilities such as nutrition, personal hygiene services and a bed to sleep in (bed, bath, bread) are needed. In Rotterdam and other cities, street doctors and street nurses are organised in street doctor practices. 32 In Rotterdam, street doctors and street nurses organise consultancy hours at six different locations for homeless people, for undoc- umented migrants and for people who are uninsured. Field workers from the homeless shelter, who do rounds outside to keep in touch with rough sleepers, try to direct them towards the street doctors. The local neighbourhood teams and the desk Sociaal Onthaal direct the uninsured homeless people to the street doctors. Furthermore, Rotterdam and other large cities have GGD-teams (GGD is the Dutch Municipal Health Authority) with specialised nurses who advise homeless people. As a