ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a way of making sense of some of his experiences working as a psychiatrist with the START team. This is a community mental health team for homeless people working across three South London boroughs with high numbers of homeless people. Experience gained from a previous mental health team working in hostels for homeless men suggested that contact with clients was more successfully established and maintained by seeing clients on-site in hostels rather than at off-site clinics. From the outset, START nurses, doctors and social workers had offered training to local voluntary agencies working with homeless people, but always on a fairly ad hoc basis. Although the START team has employed all the ways of improving working relationships with voluntary agencies, the single most effective intervention in this process has been the training programme. The initial consultancy was vital in terms of involving our client agencies in the process and spreading the sense of ownership for the programme.
