The number of people who died while homeless in Dublin was up in 2020, and two research projects are due to look at those deaths – but will they go beyond the immediate causes, and grapple with the role of barriers to supports? For example ... 1/6 https://dublininquirer.com/2021/02/03/will-research-into-homeless-deaths-catch-possible-failings-in-the-system

Among the people who have died recently while homeless in Dublin was a 31-year-old man from Lithuania, who had been a regular at the Mendicity Institution, spending days there and sleeping rough on Dublin’s streets at night. 2/6

This time last year, he had been working a cash-in-hand job as a mushroom picker, says Louisa Santoro, CEO of the Mendicity Instiution. But he lost that job before the pandemic and wasn’t able to prove he had been working. 3/6

He also couldn’t prove he had been “habitually resident in Ireland”, so he wasn’t entitled to social welfare, says Santoro. “He had no income from March last year to the time he died and it doesn’t make anyone’s circumstances better." 4/6

He had been drinking more and going downhill fast and her staff were worried, says Santoro. But they couldn’t get him a place in an alcohol detox facility because, again, he wasn’t eligible for most, she said. So the question is will the planned reviews of recent ... 5/6

... deaths look into these types of issues, or just at the immediate medical causes of death? “This death potentially could have been prevented if we had better access to services,” says Santoro. 6/6 https://dublininquirer.com/2021/02/03/will-research-into-homeless-deaths-catch-possible-failings-in-the-system