Tuesday, June 28, 2016

GH CAN Leadership 6/15/16

Greater Hartford Coordinated Access Network Leadership Committee
And Opening Doors: Greater Hartford Combined Meeting
Wednesday, June 15th, 2016

Greater Hartford CAN Leadership Items:
1.       Welcome and Introductions
2.       Mercy Housing Diversion Center – Dave Martineau
-          Dave says that the Diversion Center should be ready to be opened in mid July.
-          Leadership proposes a plan to be set in place by mid-July to figure out a schedule for CAN assessments at the Diversion Center.  
-          Leadership proposes in the future to have a northern location and central location for a drop in center for CAN assessments
3.       When to use the VI-SPDAT – Kara Capobianco
-          The Statewide CAN Leadership group had asked that the state come together and determine some consistent timeframes about when the VI-SPDAT is administered for the purpose of ensuring consistency throughout different regions.  As a result, a working group was formed to discuss the ideal time to complete a VI-SPDAT.
o   National best practice guidance has been that households should wait two weeks before completing an assessment to ensure that the tool is only being used with folks who will not self-resolve their situation
o   Shelters had concerns that holding off for a set period of time would reintroduce subjectivity to the use of this assessment tool, rather than using it to level the playing field for all clients in shelter.  There were concerns that holding off on doing the VI-SPDAT would be hard to keep track of, and might also mean that many folks who are sheltered briefly would not end up completing the VI-SPDAT. 
o   There were concerns that if there was this additional deadline to keep track of that it would add another burden to case managers that would be difficult to track when someone was approaching this timeframe.
o   In some cases, if a household is literally homeless and has never completed a VI-SPDAT, where they would complete a VI-SPDAT at the CAN assessment (like if they had been staying out doors or in a hotel paid for by government or charity) but in most cases VI-SPDATs are still being done at shelters, and in some cases at the initial meeting/intake.

-          Leadership has decided to keep administering VI SPDATs in shelter and not wait for 2 weeks to administer them. Will send feedback to CAN state leadership. 
-          Dave is proposing to purge the existing registry list, and we should discuss this further at the next meeting.
4.       Participation Agreement Updates – Matt Morgan
5.       SmartSheets Updates – See attached updates
-          Theresa has a question about what are some of the difficulties being faced by the shelters- for example South Park Inn has made more phone calls than other shelters, and yet have filled fewer beds.
-          Steve says that one of the difficulties is that some of the shelters do not do CAN assessments, so they are not able to accept clients into their shelter who are stating they are unsheltered right after the CAN assessment. While other shelters that do have open beds and are doing CAN appointments are able to take that client who is high priority off of the waiting list right away.
-          Steve says another difficulty is that when getting information on clients from the triage process there is missing information if clients are banned from a shelter. So shelters have to spend time going through their records to see if a client is banned, which takes some time to do.
-          South Park also indicated that there was still some client choice coming into play, and if clients did not like the opportunity being offered to them, they may be self-selecting not to come into shelters. 

Opening Doors Greater Hartford Items:
1.       USICH Brief/90 in 90/Zero 2016 – Matt Morgan
2.       Services and Vouchers through City of Hartford Housing Authority – Matt Morgan

Announcements:
1.       The City of Hartford ESG Diversion Grant is available today
2.       The Document Fair is this Friday!  Please encourage all your staff to make sure that any chronically homeless clients they may be working with are able to attend this event and work towards gaining documents needed for housing!


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