NRPF and high support needs: Barriers to ending homelessness

Welcome to our seventh Frontline Snapshot – spotlighting the current barriers our Casework colleagues are facing when supporting guests facing homelessness into safe and stable accommodation. 

Glass Door Homeless Charity’s year-round Casework Service provides expert advice and support to people experiencing or at risk of homelessness in London, with Caseworkers working out of partner day centres. Our open access policy means that no matter who you are or where you are from, you can turn to us for support. 

We also offer Emergency Night Shelter during the winter, providing up to 105 guests a night with a safe place to sleep and a three-course meal. Our 2025/26 season ended on March 31st. 

What are some of the barriers our guests and caseworkers currently face? 

In February this year, four months into our Winter Night Shelter season, we had in-depth conversations with our dedicated Caseworkers. We asked them about some of the challenges they’d been facing when supporting guests in their one-to-one Casework sessions.  

While not all shelter guests engage with Caseworkers, most do, so many of the issues in this blog relate to guests who stayed in our shelters this season. However, patterns and trends from the night shelters tend to reflect wider issues within the homelessness sector. 

Guests with No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) 

This season in the shelters, one of the biggest trends that our Caseworkers talked about was the increase in guests with No Recourse to Public Funds, also known as NRPF. If a guest is NRPF, they cannot claim financial help from the state, including most welfare benefits and housing assistance. When someone is homeless but also has no recourse to public funds, it is very difficult to end their homelessness because there are so few avenues for them to access support. 

I think about half of my night shelter guests were NRPF this season. It makes sense that they would use the night shelter because there's no criteria, which is great, but there’s only so much I can do to help. It’s mostly managing wellbeing or doing practical tasks with the GP or things like that.

- Amy, Caseworker 

But who even counts as NRPF? While it is true that people without legal status to enter or stay in the UK have no recourse, there are also a lot of people who do have legal status in this country who can’t access public funds under this condition. For example, they may have limited leave to remain, be on a partner visa, or they may have indefinite leave to remain but cannot access public funds for the first five years while they are being sponsored (this is called a maintenance undertaking). 

It’s quite challenging for guests with no recourse because they want to move on, but they don't have the options. It’s difficult for me as well, because I just want them to progress.

"I'm trying to think of creative ways to make guests feel that they're achieving things. Because they are in other areas, but I know its difficult for them to see other guests moving into accommodation before them.” - Amy 

Poor physical and mental health 

It’s been notable this season that a lot of our night shelter guests have had high support needs, including very bad physical and/or mental health. While not the only explanation, it could be that worsening health is one of the unfortunate consequences of general living conditions in London getting worse. The cost of living is increasing every year, there is a severe lack of affordable and social housing, crucial services are struggling, and people are falling through the cracks. 

Poverty contributes to mental ill health. Often, it's all about trauma, isn't it? The experience of compound trauma throughout someone's life can often cause mental ill health, which can then lead to street homelessness, which can then lead to physical health problems.

- Alice, Senior Caseworker, Multiple Disadvantage  

This is a complex topic with a lot of factors leading to the increase in guests with poor physical and mental health and the increased difficulty in trying to resolve their homelessness. Below, we’ve raised a couple of reasons why poor physical and mental health has been such a big challenge this shelter season. 

a) Statutory services are overwhelmed 

When it becomes clear that a guest has high support needs and they will need extra help to leave homelessness behind, it should be up to statutory services to provide support. You can learn about statutory support for homelessness here. However, this is never as straightforward as it should be. 

If our guests have complex needs that casework cannot fully meet, we can access statutory services. However, since this process takes a lot of time, we are often forced to seek alternative solutions in the first place.

- Boguslaw, Co-head of Casework 

It can be frustrating when guests don’t get the statutory support they should be entitled to, for example, when they are not given the priority need status which would allow them to access emergency accommodation. However, a large reason for this is the lack of funding and resources that statutory services currently have access to, pointing to larger systemic issues around homelessness and mental health that need to be tackled by the government. 

In my four years at Glass Door, I never had that number of guests with such high support needs at the same time. I’ve had to deal much more in depth with local authorities and mental health teams than before.

- Olu, Caseworker 

b) Night shelters are unsuitable for high support needs 

Our Winter Night Shelter provision is undeniably lifesaving. This season, we welcomed 491 guests into our shelters, which means 491 people didn’t have to sleep rough for at least one night. Additionally, the average stay for guests was 24.6 nights.  

However, our night shelters are ultimately an emergency provision to ensure people have somewhere to sleep, something to eat and a bridge to our Casework Service to find stable housing, but they are not the same as fully equipped, supported accommodation services that are created for guests with high support needs. 

Shelters are not suitable for sick, elderly people. I've even had guests with cancer who should've been given priority for housing, but this didn’t happen.

- Isabel, Caseworker 

And mental health struggles can also make the sometimes chaotic, communal shelter environment a real challenge for guests to cope with. While it can be helpful for someone struggling with their mental health to stay in our shelters, as it means our Casework team can regularly check in and provide support, night shelters aren’t always suitable. Many of these guests should be receiving more specialist care.

"Guests with high needs often have sporadic engagement, so it’s difficult to understand exactly what’s going on and how it needs to be approached."

Some of their needs are so high that they struggle to stay in the night shelters, and I’ve had social care involved in about four of my cases so far. It just shouldn't be so hard for people who are so unwell.

- Glass Door Caseworker 

It’s clear that more needs to be done to recognise and support the needs of people facing multiple disadvantages alongside homelessness. Poor physical and mental health are not only consequences of homelessness, but often causes of it too, and breaking this vicious cycle should be a priority for the government if they truly want homelessness figures to stop breaking records. 

You can read our previous Quarterly Frontline Snapshots from June 2025 and Janurary 2026 if you want to find out more about some of the other barriers our caseworkers regularly face when supporting all of our guests.