ABSTRACT
The number of homeless in the Netherlands is, to a great extent, unknown: the Dutch Health Council, an advisory board to the Ministry of Health, issued a report in which it stated that the number might be between 20,000 and 30,000. Changes in society have engendered the development of new forms of care, especially between mental care and social care, with new groups of clients. The coordinator of the registration system is Federatie Opvang, a national cooperative body of some 120 institutions dealing with institutionalised social care. Research among homeless mainly limits itself to surveys and non-structured interviews. Registered data are only rarely used. Combination of data of different registrations is possible without endangering the privacy of clients involved: through probabilistic linkage, on a limited number of personal identifying characteristics. The institutions from which the data on homeless are collected are typical welfare institutions.
