Home > “There’s quite a lot of breakdown between services”: palliative care and supporting people experiencing long-term homelessness with life-limiting illnesses in Dublin. A qualitative interview study.

Conneely, Aoibheen and McQuillan, Regina and Marshall, Steve and Bristowe, Katherine (2024) “There’s quite a lot of breakdown between services”: palliative care and supporting people experiencing long-term homelessness with life-limiting illnesses in Dublin. A qualitative interview study. European Journal of Homelessness, 18, (2),

External website: https://www.feantsa.org/public/user/Observatory/20...


People experiencing long-term homelessness have a younger age of death than the housed population. Deaths within homelessness include, but are not limited to, deaths from life-limiting illnesses. People experiencing homelessness encounter multiple barriers accessing health services which include barriers accessing palliative care services. The aim of this Research Note is to describe the experience of staff working with people experiencing long-term homelessness who are living with, or have died from, life-limiting illnesses, utilising semi-structured 1:1 interviews. Eleven participants were recruited from four organisations in Dublin. Five overarching themes were generated: (1) challenges identifying palliative care need, (2) negative and positive experience of death of a service user, (3) identified need for external health and social care support, (4) need for service user focused care to enable a positive death experience, and (5) concerns regarding supporting the increasing number of ageing people living within homelessness requiring palliative care.

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