GH CAN Leadership 6/17/2020

GREATER HARTFORD COORDINATED ACCESS NETWORK MEETING AGENDA

Follow Up Meeting

Wednesday, June 17^th via Zoom

 1PM – 2:15PM

1.       Welcome and Introductions – 5 minutes

2.       COVID – 19 – 15 minutes

                                                               i.      Agency Update

1.       Lisa from Salvation Army – bring back essential social services staff who operates food pantries, financial assistance, including diversion and homeless prevention starting 7/13/2020, moving around offices for spacing and other protocols. Resources for COVID will be allocated to GH CAN.

2.       Fred – The Open Hearth – begun to open up, resumed employment searches and intakes into TEP and Catherine’s Place from various treatment centers/off the streets if willing to be tested. Looking to open up shelter program fairly soon. TOH will take a client in into isolation until test result comes back. Emphasizing to treatment center that if possible they test prior.

3.       Rebekah – ImmaCare, open! Doing as much by phone as possible, community room upstairs is closed but case managers can meet with clients there if necessary to allow extra space, extra PPE and cleaning stuff in place. Looking at mid-August open date for shelter.

4.       Jen – CHR – no new staff or client COVID cases. Increasing availability to see clients face to face. Most of staff will be home based and come into office as needed. Looking to increase more face to face contact – from emergency basis to normal/routine

5.       Steve Bigler – CRT, no cases at McKinney or East Hartford shelter among staff or clients – working on return to work policy but due to size of agency and funders/mixed use trying to find way to bring back staff and clients in the building at one time. Still remote – all programs are open and doing phone calls and doing case management over phone. Still looking for veterans – VA has reduced restrictions. Does not need NTQ anymore, just need letter from landlord behind on rent and can assist financially. At-risk/unstably housed, let CRT SSVF know.

6.       Crane – no updates on cases at this point. Most staff will stay working remotely until 7/20/2020.

7.       Heather – Interval House – no new updates. Continuing to operate, leaving clients separate in rooms. Non-essential staff at least through July, possibly further working remotely.

8.       Yoshi - South Park Inn- no new COVID cases, keeping staff working, no other changes. Looking at space with Jane to make space more safe given a return to primary site.

9.       Cathy Z – YWCA, no new COVID cases. Continuing to take new cases. Starting to see staff having to go out on CARES leave due to childcare issue, down PSH CM and part time program manager. 

10.   Kara Capone – no new cases to report, return for non-essential employees plan, right amount of PPE, stockpile in anticipation of spikes across the country, Plexiglas – any non-essential staff that can work from home is still working from home – soft opening in July. Watchful waiting.

11.   John Lawlor – The Connection – no positive cases, returning to meeting with staff this Monday.

12.   Kimberly May Miller – chrysalis – no positive cases they are aware of. Opened up administrating on 5/11 – front line staff returned on 5/20/20. Looking back rec entry for participants (10 at a time) lottery process. Have participants who are not ready to come. Looking at volunteer policy. Temperatures are taken on everyone before they’re entering the building everyday – monitoring questions. Identified new CPO – Brian Bonds, will be starting 7/13/2020.

3.       COVID Testing

a.       PPE – Journey Home has been requesting supplies on behalf of CAN, continuing to take requests through Alison – Steve Dilella is asking for another request for PPE – plan to stockpile, did not mention how long so we are using 6 month period – if you want to submit numbers you can, will look at past usage and project out for past 6 months – wants to get request in ASAP while emergency operations center is still operating.

b.       Several statewide task force on testing – protocols – try to do testing as consistently as possible across the state. Successfully tested at two hotels and TOH. Testing at hotels again on 6/24/2020 – if you want all congregate settings get tested – Amanda gathered list before Memorial Day of sites that need to be tested on a continuous basis – plan is locally we have to come up with plan – has to be on us as a CAN To work with healthcare providers to get testing plan in place – no guidelines about how often to get population retested – might be realistic to do it once per month. TOH has been testing every 2 weeks, this coming Wednesday is last of the two weeks series – if numbers continue, will go to monthly. If numbers go up, will bring it back to two weeks. If we go to HHC for testing, need to provide roster up front but roster changes all the time. After each testing, the data is supposed to go into HMIS so ROI needs to be sign with healthcare provider and HMIS ROI. Amanda sending batch info for testing. Moving forward need to figure out who will be doing data upload (each agency will be responsible). Start by going over list of sites and then go to HHC – goal on statewide call was to have every site tested by end of June.

4.       Statewide ESG-COVID Housing Effort Update –Andrea Hakian and Crane Cesario – 15 minutes

a.       RRH combined for GH & Central CAN – Prevention is half hour for GH CAN & then half hour for Central CAN – if interested in joining, please send Matt & Sofina an email so we can send invite to meetings.

b.       Prevention – different strategies that have been named so far – tenant resource center providing legal services & rental arrears/financial assistance and case management services. One per each CAN. Potential sites. Discussed swift factory, CRT’s community centers, Salvation Army’s two sites as potential sites for these services using ESG funds, reaching out to GH legal aid to employ attorney presuming we get funding. Utility assistance covid – telehealth in home for people after COVID. If you have thoughts on what it would take to provide telehealth (technology or services to go to the house with technology, let us know) looking for new ideas as planning eviction/prevention stuff. Increasing diversion capacity in both CANS to provide additional diversion services. Immacare staff will not be doing diversion once shelter opens. Want to increase capacity anyway to increase time with household and not waiting 48 hours to be scheduled. Trying to provide more front end support.

c.       RRH – CHR will be subcontracting to Mercy for at least one staff position – in house for rest of positions. Aggressively trying to recruit staff for open positions – posted 2 full time positions for COVID ESG – also had COC Rapid program that was awarded to CHR starting 7/1/2020 so also hiring full time case manager for that position. Started interviews this week. Andrea shared a form that is normally used for RRH (barriers) and integrated questions from Fair Housing for equity into one combined form. Also had a shared housing roommate form to get preference on roommate situation. Form will be uploaded into HMIS. Do shelters have capacity to have these clients fill these out for head start. Unaffiliated clients at hotels have been assigned case managers. SPI has no issue to complete but uploading may be issue due to technology – can’t do batch format and individually uploading all the time may be issue. Completing surveys is possible. Need better technology for uploading. YWCA thumbs up. Lisa will send out form to case managers and the shared housing form.

5.       Agenda Items – 2 minutes

6.       Announcements – 2 minutes

a.       Crane – Housing Coordinator position will be available – if not state employee already will need to go through background check – has to go through DCF – process can take up to 8 weeks, person who does background checks also retired so may be a lengthy process. Crane will send a job description – posting will be available later.