GH CAN Operations Meeting 3/22/17

Greater Hartford Coordinated Access Network

Operations Agenda

Wednesday March 22^nd, 2017

In Attendance: 

Alicia Akers - CRT

Crane Cesario - DMHAS

Roger Clark - ImmaCare

Tylon Crump - CRT SSVF

Cat Damato - CRT

Kyren McCrorey - The Open Hearth

Angel Fernandez - The Open Hearth

Kelly Gonzalez - CRT

Nicole Milton - CHR Enfield

Matt Morgan - Journey Home

Malika Nelson - CHR PATH

Maureen Perez - CRT / McKinney

Heather Pilarcik - South Park Inn

Chris Robinson - Chrysalis Center

Amy Robinson - US Department of Veterans Affairs

Rob Soderberg - CHR

Wendy Walker - CRT/ McKinney

Julie Bernstein - CHR Enfield

Sarah DiMaio - Salvation Army Marshall House

Kelanda Santos - My Sisters' Place

Christie Corrigan - No Freeze Project

1.      Welcome and Introductions

2.      Coordinated Entry:

a.      End of Cold Weather Protocol

-        Christie says they are making announcements of closing No Freeze and Welcome Center on March 31.

-        Christie says on Friday that anyone at the Welcome Center to see if they are on the Shelter Waitlist.

-        Christie will announce today at No Freeze to check their status on the shelter waitlist and to go to the Welcome Center to do that.

-        Christie says Navigators and case managers are welcome to come to the Welcome Center and if they want to go through the No Freeze rosters. If people would like to look at the rosters to contact Christie before going over.

-        Christie says tonight is the last night they will have availability of 75 beds at the No Freeze and the rest of the nights it is open they will have 50 beds.

-        Sarah says that there is available funds for hoteling families until the next of the month.

-        Steve says that clients who appear at their CAN appointments and need to be added to the shelter waitlist will place the Mercy Friendship Center number to contact the client.

3.      Releases of Information

a.      CCT Release of Information

-        Mollie says if any client needs to be discussed at the CCT meeting to contact Amanda Girardin at Journey Home.

-        Sarah says the last CCT meeting that she went to was not productive since there was no resolution for their clients.

-        Gerry says that having the release is important in order to have easy access to get a client’s diagnosis and information.

-        Luz asks how can case managers get an expedited record of their clients due to it takes 30 days for it get by mail.

-        Angel says if you can go to the medical records office to get that information for the client.

4.      Coordinated Exit:

a.      Third party verification of homelessness requirements - In addition to the Homeless Verification Form itself that must be completed, all housing programs are required by their funders (HUD, or Department of Housing) to collect third party evidence of any time participants are literally homeless.  This means that in addition to creating a timeline on the Homeless Verification form, all housing programs are required to have evidence that supports that timeline.  This can include shelter records (either letters, or printouts from HMIS), letters from outreach workers, or letters from other providers to verify unsheltered time.  

i.                 HMIS Enrollments - Journey Home distributed a guide to accessing client "Face Sheets" in CT HMIS.  The Face Sheet function pulls together all shelter enrollments associated with a particular client ID and organizes the information chronologically.  Face sheets will only pull data for the information in one client ID at a time, so if a household has multiple IDs, all relevent HMIS enrollments will need to be printed, and multiple face sheets may be required if a household has multiple HMIS IDs.

ii.                Letters from outreach workers - If households have spent time unsheltered, any household can self-verify up to 3 months of unsheltered time.  But ideally, households who have been working with outreach workers should be able to obtain letters from outreach workers.  Sometimes outreach workers may be asked to update a letter they had written previously.  This is because there is sometimes a delay between when folks are added to the priority list and when they are matched to a housing program.  Because housing programs are required to prove any time that a household is homeless, the housing programs may request updated information from outreach workers to ensure the household's whole timeline is covered.

-        Mollie says the housing programs are required to update that the client is still currently homeless. It is the responsibility of the housing program to make sure this information is updated to prove the client is still homeless when accepting them into their housing program.

iii.               Who is responsible for updating homeless verification information - It is ultimately the responsibility of housing programs to update any homeless verification required between the time households were added to the Priority List to the point at which they came in for intake.  

5.      Announcements

a.      CCEH is offering a training called Housing Plans for All Clients on the morning of April 3^rd. Register on www.cceh.org

b.      CCEH is offering full SPIDAT training and full SPDAT Train The Trainer training April 3^rd and 4^th. Contact your agency leadership to request training.

c.      Advocacy day for the GH CAN will be taking place on Wednesday, April 12th