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A new project by Street Nurses investigates whether animals can be used to facilitate contact with homeless people.

As you may have noticed, homeless people often have a dog with them. This four-legged friend is very important to its owner: it offers protection, of course, but most of all, its presence offers comfort and affection that makes the difficulties of street life a little easier to bear.

Encouraging formerly homeless people to get on with their lives and become so attached to their new home that they will never want to leave. This is, in a nutshell, the mission of the "My Way" project that we launched at the beginning of the year.  The aim is clear: to ensure that our patients never fall back on the streets again.

You who has been protected by a legitimate governmental measure imposing a moratorium on evictions given the health situation, you are about to re-join the mass of those who, on September first, will be evicted.

The Follow-up is the second step for our patients towards stable and sustainable reintegration into housing. It consists of intensive accompaniment for the person; it is the core of our work. It starts on the street and continues until the patient is reintegrated into housing, where he or she will still benefit from the support of the professionals and volunteers of Street Nurses, on a regular but spaced basis.

For a few months now, a new team has been working on the streets of Liege: Céline, a nurse, and Doriane, a social worker, have joined Gaïd, project manager.

2020 was for everybody a strange and difficult year but even more so for homeless people. This “lockdown year” has at least put the spotlight on the consequences of homelessness, especially in Brussels and Liège.

This brought up the question as to when we could let our patients go. Under what conditions? Following which procedure?

Joséphine has been working for six years as a nurse in the non-profit organization "Street Nurses". She tells us about her daily work.

When quarantine started, in March, hotels in Brussels have opened their doors to offer a total of 820 rooms to host the homeless people. Meanwhile, those infrastructures have closed and as off today, only 92 rooms are available (according to Bruss’help).

To “Infirmiers de rue” it is a big regret.

A lack of times and human resources makes it impossible for us to look after all homeless people at the same time. We must make a selection.

Each of us is gifted in some way. For some that’s obvious, for others much less so. Knowing what we are capable of and communicating it to other people gives us self-confidence and self-esteem.

Émilie Meessen, a graduate in nursing and community health, has been working in the homelessness sector in Brussels for 2 years when she makes the following observation: despite the presence of a developed network of associations in Brussels, the number of homeless people remains considerable in the streets of the capital.