Behind every door
Homelessness, mental health, substance use and the law.
A half day on what sits behind every door: homelessness, multiple disadvantage, mental health, substance use and harm reduction, and homelessness law in Wales and England.
- Level
- Explore
- Learning time
- 6 hours
- Where
- Homelessness, Mental Health and Multiple Disadvantage
- Price
- £129
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Leaders and practitioners in housing, councils, the NHS, mental health, substance use services, police and charities across Wales and England.
Overview
This half-day Explore builds a full picture of homelessness and the disadvantages that surround it. It begins with the spectrum of homelessness, person-first language and the figures in Wales and England, then reframes multiple disadvantage through Hard Edges and the MEAM Approach. It turns to the cycle between mental health and homelessness, mental health law to the Mental Health Act 2025, and co-occurring conditions under NICE guideline NG58. Harm reduction follows, with WEDINOS and practical steps for hostels. It closes with homelessness law, from the Housing (Wales) Act 2014 and the 2026 Welsh Act to England's Homelessness Reduction Act 2017.
Aims
This Explore aims to develop leaders who understand the whole person behind every figure, see how mental health, substance use and homelessness interact, put keeping people alive first, and use the law in Wales and England to prevent homelessness and design services that fit people.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Describe how homelessness, mental health and substance use interact in the lives of the people you serve.
- Identify the legal duties and practical steps that help your service prevent homelessness and reduce harm.
- Plan changes that move your local system towards coordinated, person-centred support.
What you'll develop
Across this Explore, you will develop the ability to:
- Apply the five things leaders do to move your services from managing homelessness towards ending it, so that services fit people rather than people fitting services.
- Interpret the headline figures on rough sleeping and temporary accommodation in Wales and England, including how each nation counts and why the figures are not like for like.
- Explain the reframing from complex people to complex systems, and how services built for one need create gaps for people facing several.
- Apply a no wrong door approach, with warm handovers, shared plans and joint assessments, to remove designed-in barriers to care and make rights reachable.
- Plan a good discharge for someone at risk of homelessness, treating discharge as a transition and drawing on section 117 aftercare and the homelessness duties on public bodies.
- Apply practical harm reduction steps in housing and hostels, including naloxone, disclosure without penalty and welfare checks at known moments of risk.
- Explain what the 2026 Act asks of frontline teams, leaders and boards, including the duty to ask and act, plans without sanctions and the role of judgement.
- Plan practical steps to prevent discharge into homelessness, drawing on the lessons of Everyone In about what makes rapid, joined-up action possible.
Built from 4 parts.
6 hours of learning.
- 01Hard edgesHomelessness, its scale and multiple disadvantageBitesize3 modules
- 02Minds under pressureMental health, homelessness and the lawBitesize2 modules
- 03Keeping people aliveSubstance use, co-occurring conditions and harm reductionBitesize2 modules
- 04Two laws, one duty of careHomelessness law in Wales and EnglandBitesize2 modules
Keep going.
Part of the Homelessness, Mental Health and Multiple Disadvantage topic, also sold whole as No wrong door.
Go deeper, and pay only the difference
- You are hereExplore, 6 hours, £129
- The whole topicImmerse, No wrong door, 11 hours, £249. Already own the Explore? You pay £120.
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Prices per person. Read the full terms
Other Explore in the Homelessness, Mental Health and Multiple Disadvantage topic
See all in Homelessness, Mental Health and Multiple Disadvantage