A homelessness support initiative called Driving for Change has refurbished two London buses to offer healthcare and dental services to homeless people.

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The Change Please Foundation had previously repurposed and fitted out buses to provide essential services and facilities to the homeless such as doctors, vets, banking, showers, hair dressing, financial literacy training and therapy assessments. They had a vision to add dental services, housed inside a bus, that could be driven to homeless people as part of their Driving for Change initiative.

Change Please approached Eclipse Dental Engineering Ltd, a Greater London-based company providing solutions for those wanting to create, improve or maintain their surgeries, with their brief. Change Please asked for Eclipse Dental's assistance in refurbishing the buses so that they could be launched ahead of World Homeless Day with London Mayor Sadiq Khan on 10 October 2021.

Meetings went ahead to find workable solutions to installing a dental surgery and decontamination room on the bus, including finding the best choices for air compressor, suction pump and autoclave with the lowest possible electrical supply requirement.

Sadiq Khan commented: 'As a son of a bus driver I'm so proud to see our buses used in this way'.

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According to Change Please, the numbers of rough sleepers in the UK have risen exponentially over the past 18 months, with an estimated 130,000 households made homeless due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Driving for Change will give people experiencing homelessness pathways to potentially life-saving key services. To find out more, visit www.changeplease.org/pages/driving-for-change.