Producing single homelessness: descriptive practice in community mental health casework

This is a case study of a community-based interdisciplinary team of Mental Health professionals who work with homeless people in a large English city. Its aim is to 'unpack' the team's decision-making processes. Such processes construct the client as vulnerable in terms of mental health and/or homelessness. The analysis shows the ways in which client description is an organised social accomplishment and is contexted in related research in the sociology of mental illness. Following Goffman (1974) and Gubrium (1989), data are analysed against a background of changing and laminated frames and local cultures. A charge of deviancy is brought and then debated (McHugh 1970). The relation of this analysis to ethical and policy issues is discussed.