Cold Weather Shelter Meeting:
In Attendance:
Lou Gilbert – ImmaCare
Matt Morgan- Journey Home
Sarah DiMaio- Salvation Army Marshall House
Jose Vega – CRT McKinney
Tyeisha Saffold – CRT East Hartford Family Shelter
Steve Bigler – CRT McKinney/EHFS
Roger Clark – ImmaCare
Bryan Flint – Cornerstone
Kryen McCrorey – The Open Hearth
Nate Fox – Center Church/ No Freeze Project
Kara Capobianco – DOH
Mollie Greenwood – Journey Home
1. Interactions
between shelters, No Freeze, and Warming Center
a.
Nate expressed that things were going smoothly
all things considered at the Welcome Center and No Freeze
i. Although
the governor did not activate Severe Cold Weather this weekend, the No-Freeze
shelter did open up to be 75 beds. The No-Freeze would be reducing back
down to 50 beds for tonight.
b.
Sarah said that though some things were going
smoothly, they had run into some issues around shelter placement for individual
women.
i. The
biggest issue that the Salvation Army staff had been seeing was resistance from
folks at women/family shelters in placing individual women, and issues around
communication.
1.
In one instance, Salvation Army called seeking a
bed for single women and was informed that it wasn’t possible to take someone
because only top-bunk placements were available, and the elderly individual
they were trying to place would not be able to move.
a.
In this particular situation, it was not
possible to move other folks in the shelter around to top bunks, because all
the folks in bottom bunks were pregnant, and were also unable to use
top-bunks. This information hadn’t been conveyed when Marshall House
staff had been inquiring about a bed though, so it came across as staff
unwillingness to work collaboratively.
2.
In another situation, No-Freeze staff had called
around to women and family shelters and were told that there were no beds
available, and when Marshall House staff called around they were told that
there were beds available. When Welcome Center staff contacted the
shelter with available beds, there was an unwillingness to take folks from the
Welcome Center due to concerns about breaking policies or procedures.
There seems to be a lot of worry from front-line staff that they are sticking
to appropriate process and procedures, and in some cases this is coming across
as refusing to share information about bed availability or reluctance to take
folks in from the Welcome Center.
3.
There have also been challenges in communication
regarding families in the hotel, and whether they’re able to come to all
shelters earlier in the day than standard intake time- EHFS indicated that
folks can definitely come to EHFS earlier in the day if they need to.
4.
It’s important that if there are families
staying in hotels, shelters work to help prioritize them for immediate
placement so that we can preserve hotel funding throughout the winter.
Hotel check-out time is 10AM, so Marshall House staff have been trying their
best to communicate with shelters and make placement plans before having to pay
for multiple nights whenever possible.
ii. A
big trend that we discussed was that in the past year, as we have continued to
adjust, and adjust, and adjust our policies further, it’s gotten very difficult
for front line staff to train and get consistent around shelter entry
procedures, to make sure that everyone is working the same way.
1.
What we ultimately determined is that
shelters and the Welcome Center need to continue communicating with each other
consistently. If shelters have available beds, and there are folks at
the Welcome Center who have no other place to go, we want to make sure that
those households are getting directed to the open shelter beds.
a.
Lou raised concerns about giving too much
responsibility to front-line staff to use their discretion to take folks in,
and worried that if we start asking folks to use discretion to take folks in,
it could be a slippery slope to not following protocol in other times.
i. Kara
said that what was really important was not to let perfect get in the way of
good. No matter what process or procedure we have in place, there will be
occasions where folks show up in the middle of the night in a snow storm and we
want to make sure, ultimately, that we are keeping our community safe, and
getting folks connected to shelter beds whenever it is possible at all.
b.
During the Cold Weather months, the group
decided that it was essential that front-line staff be instructed to
communicate and share information with the Welcome Center and No-Freeze staff,
to try and make sure we’re maximizing resources. It doesn’t make
sense to place a family of 3 in a hotel if another family was having beds held
for them and didn’t show up, and it doesn’t make sense to fill up the No-Freeze
if there are beds open at year-round shelters. We have a consistent
waitlist procedure in place during the daytime hours, but if shelters are
finding that folks are not showing up for beds, or they have more openings than
they anticipated, we really need everyone to work together with No-Freeze and
Welcome Center staff to make sure we’re maximizing any and all beds in the CAN
before using overflow space or hotel funds.
iii. An
issue we discussed was making sure that folks are getting to the diversion
center even if they end up going into shelter before an assessment.
During the winter months, when the Welcome Center is operating, there may be
situations where folks end up in a shelter before they go to their CAN
appointment. It’s very important that folks still go to this appointment,
because folks can still access diversion funding even if they spend a couple of
nights in shelter. Up to 7 nights in shelter, folks can still be eligible
for diversion funds, so it’s important that even if folks are calling 211 from
the welcome center, or from a shelter, that they are encouraged to go to their
CAN appointment.
iv. Jose
indicated that McKinney had multiple open shelter beds last night, and so we
discussed how the No-Freeze shelter should operate as an overflow
shelter. Generally, the Welcome Center is calling around to shelters
working on placement throughout the night from 4-8.
1.
For single women and families who come to the
Welcome Center, Welcome Center staff generally start calling around to shelters
as soon as folks arrive to try and find shelter placements. For single
men they do the same, but don’t always call every men’s shelter.
a.
The men’s shelters who were present
(ImmaCare, McKinney, and The Open Hearth) all committed that if they don’t get
a call from the Welcome Center, but do have open beds, that they will call the
Welcome Center at 7PM each night to try and ensure that we are maximizing
year-round shelters before overflow space at the No-Freeze whenever possible.
v. Another
issue we discussed was outreach.
1.
Ideally, we want all outreach workers to
be able to add people to the shelter waitlist as soon as they encounter them in
the field. This will be a topic for discussion at next month’s outreach
meeting.
2.
We also want to improve our process and
communication with the Police department. For the winter months, if
police identify people staying unsheltered, it would be ideal to tell them about
the Welcome Center. Mollie will try to contact Hartford Police Dept to
help explain new process for winter protocol in GH CAN.
c.
Shelter Waitlist: At this time, we did not add
any new fields to the shelter waitlist, or change any existing labels.
i. The
new Diversion Team will be working to help us call through the waiting list to
try and keep it cleaner.
ii. We
discussed wanting a script that all the shelters could use while calling folks
to make sure that we are consistently sending the same messaging to people
seeking shelter. Journey Home will send out a script for all shelters
to utilize when calling through the waitlist, to try and make sure that as
folks are being called, they aren’t immediately being offered a shelter bed,
but are first being asked where they’ve been staying. We hope that by
having all shelter staff asking this consistently when calling the waitlist,
and with the Diversion team helping on the list, we will get a good sense of
who is actually staying unsheltered and can better connect vulnerable
folks to any availability.
a.
Journey Home will also need to unlock the
“where did you stay last night” column, so that as folks are calling down the
list, if this situation has changed, any staff will be able to adjust that
information. Steve Hurley will make that change soon, and will notify
end-users when it has been updated.
