Darren O’Shea in London, February 2019

It is with great sadness that we share the news that Darren O’Shea passed away in hospital in London on 17 January 2021. Darren was a long-standing and much valued member of our Homeless Research Programme here at HSCWRU. He worked on the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) study about improving hospital discharge arrangements for people who are homeless, sharing his lived experiences and giving presentations at many conferences and events. He was also a member of the Department of Health and Social Care’s Rough Sleeping Advisory Group, and advised the Healthy London Partnership based at City Hall. He was influential in campaigning for ‘step-down’ care so that people who are homeless have somewhere to stay when they leave hospital and it is now government policy that these services are developed across England. We are grateful for all Darren did to improve homeless health services and to contribute to our research at HSCWRU.

Stan Burridge, an Involvement specialist and another member of HSCWRU’s Homeless Research Programme, writes:

‘I was fortunate to work with Darren on many occasions over the past few years, and the value he brought to the work is almost beyond measure. We can forget that researching homelessness and social exclusion issues is dependent on capturing the harsh reality of people’s lives. Darren, who was often floating in and out of his own chaos, was a stark reminder that we were working to make a difference to real people with real lives and that our work goes beyond datasets. Darren had an incredibly valuable skill in that he was able to step out of his own difficult world and focus on the plight of others around him, and this brought a richness to the work we did together. His ability to talk openly, often when the rawness of his own journey was very evident, brought vividness to the research from a rich life, sadly now cut short. Darren’s death leaves a void and although we are saddened we are also enriched by the time he gave us. We will ensure his legacy lives on.’

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Darren O’Shea (1977-2021)