The University of Sheffield
Sheffield Institute for Studies on Ageing

Dr Maureen Crane

Dr Maureen Crane

Research Fellow

Address
Sheffield Institute for Studies on Ageing
Elmfield
Northumberland Road
Sheffield
S10 2TU
Tel: (+44) (0) 114 226 9834
Fax: (+44) (0) 114 271 5915
Email: m.a.crane@sheffield.ac.uk

Research Interests

Maureen Crane is a registered general and mental nurse and practiced in the field of psychiatry for many years. She has pioneered research on older homeless people in the UK since the early 1990s. She left nursing in 1994 to pursue full-time research and was awarded an ESRC part-time (later full-time) Advanced Course Studentship. She completed her doctorate on Pathways into Later Life Homelessness in 1997, which was subsequently published by the Open University Press. She obtained a Leverhulme Special Research Fellowship for two years in October 2000.

Maureen Crane has now been awarded an ESRC Research Fellowship for 30 months from May 2004. This will provide a foundation from which to:

  1. consolidate the findings of recent studies and prepare publications for academics and practitioners,
  2. elaborate the research programme in the UK,
  3. plan, design and set up a second international collaborative study.

Through intensive and ethnographic field-work in the early 1990s with older homeless people on the streets, at services and in their own homes, she has profiled the characteristics and needs of older homeless people, and examined their pathways into and out of homelessness. In 1996, she was awarded the Nursing Research Prize by the Northern General Hospital NHS Trust in Sheffield for this work. From the early ethnographic studies, she has developed a substantial research programme on homelessness with Tony Warnes.

The programme, `Homeless People and Homeless Services´, now concerns homeless people of all ages, and has theoretical, analytical and applied aims. It contributes to the understanding of homelessness and to theory development, and to service development and the prevention of homelessness. It has included:

  1. the first UK longitudinal study of the outcomes of resettlement for older homeless people;
  2. an international comparative study of the causes of homelessness among older people, with partner organisations in Boston, Massachusetts and in Melbourne, Australia;
  3. a study of wet day centres for street drinkers;
  4. the production of a comprehensive factfile on the profiles of homeless people, and services and policies relating to homelessness;
  5. multi-strand surveys of the profiles of single homeless people in London, involving 140 service-provider organisations;
  6. a study of the role of hostels for single homeless people in the early 21st century, and a review of how they have changed in London since 1990.

Maureen Crane and Tony Warnes were awarded the Tony Denison Research prize for the best UK research report on homelessness during 2001.

Maureen Crane has worked closely with several organisations providing services for homeless people, and initiated the establishment of the Lancefield Street Centre in London for older homeless people. It opened in 1997, operated as a pilot scheme for two years, and was managed by St Mungo's, the largest voluntary organisation in London working with street homeless people. Following an evaluation of the scheme, a replacement and permanent project has been established by St Mungo's in London since December 2000.

She has developed strong links with researchers and service-providers in the USA and Australia. She has co-authored two book chapters with Professor Carl Cohen of the State University of New York and the leading US psychiatry researcher on older homeless people, and presented her work to the Caucus on Homelessness at the American Public Health Association Conferences of 1998, 2000 and 2003.

She is a member of the British Society of Gerontology, the Working Party of the UK Coalition on Older Homelessness, and the American Public Health Association, and its Caucus on Homelessness. Former member of: Homeless Link´s Multiple Needs Steering Group; Arlington Care Association's Older Homeless People´s Advocacy Scheme; St Mungo´s Elderly Homeless Persons Steering Group; and Age Concern Greater London's Working Party on older homeless people.