Greater Hartford CAN Meeting 12/10/14

GREATER HARTFORD COORDINATED ACCESS NETWORK

MEETING NOTES

Wednesday, Dec 10, 2014

 In Attendance:

Rubi Alegria – Mercy Housing

Shannon Baldassario – MACC

Sandy Barry – Salvation Army Marshall House

Steve Bigler – CRT

Sonia Brown – CRT

Crane Cesario – CRMHC

Roger Clark – ImmaCare

Bryan Dixon – InterCommunity

Willem Donahue- Journey Home

Fred Faulkner – The Open Hearth

Rosemary Flowers – My Sisters’ Place

Chris Fortier – The Open Hearth

Chelsea – Fortson – CHR

Mary Gillette- Mercy Housing

Ruby Givens-Hewitt – Salvation Army Marshall House

Tenesha Grant – Mercy Housing

Mollie Greenwood – Journey Home

Andrea Hakian – CHR

Amber Higgins – CHR

Mark Jenkins – Blue Hills Civic Association

Steve MacHattie - ImmaCare

Dave Martineau – Mercy Housing

Dalila May – Interval House

Asra Mir – CHR

Matt Morgan – Journey Home

Theresa Nicholson – Chrysalis Center

Pieter Nijssen – Tri-Town Shelter

Roxan Noble – YWCA / Chrysalis Center

Heather Pilarcik – South Park Inn

Lisa Portal – Columbus House

Jamie Randolph – CRT / East Hartford Shelter

Lionel Rigler – City of Hartford

Amy Robinson – CRT

Sara Salomons – CRT / Hartford COC

Barbara Shaw – Hands on Hartford

Kathy Shaw – My Sisters’ Place

Rob Soderberg – CHR

Sarah Trench – Journey Home

Jose Vega- CRT / McKinney Shelter

Adam Tussmy – Chrysalis Center

Clarissa Garcia – ImmaCare

Rebecca Straton – The Network 

1.      Introductions & GH-CAN Meeting Notes for last week, 12/3/2014 (emailed)

2.      Updates:

a.      Rapid Results Institute- Journey Home is helping to organize a 100 Day Rapid Results campaign to end chronic homelessness in Greater Hartford.  The 100 days will kick off with the PIT count, but before the campaign begins a number of sub-groups are trying to start laying the foundation for the campaign.  The sub groups include a Document Readiness group that hopes to break down barriers, a group to raise some flex funds, a group devoted to data collection and reporting, and a group that will focus on increasing housing inventory across the region.  Please contact Matt Morgan at matt.morgan@journeyhomect.org if you would like to join any of these groups.

b.      Assessment Appointment Scheduling Update- Revisit assessment schedule since last meeting.

                                                              i.      Assessment sites have continued to see high rates of no-shows at appointments.  Family appointment sites were reporting fewer no-shows. 

1.      211 will be providing data about no-shows in our CAN Thursday, and Journey Home will distribute that information by email.

                                                            ii.      211 has informed us that there are still a number of past appointments in our system that are showing “referred” as a status, meaning that the cases have not been completed.  DSCs, please update all information from past appointments and select a client status of no-show, diverted, accepted for enrollment, or waitlist.

                                                          iii.      There was some concern that people who are looking for housing, not shelter, are reluctant to present at shelter for this assessment appointment.

                                                           iv.      We discussed the interim appointments that our sites have been hosting.  We also discussed that in other regions, sites have been double booking, or having drop in times for appointments.  We discussed potentially shortening appointments.  We also discussed potentially calling clients the day before their appointment to remind them that they have an appointment scheduled. 

                                                             v.      We discussed that in New Britain/Bristol CAN, staff is planning to each take on a day and host as many appointments as possible to try and knock out the backlog from the beginning of their “live” CAN.  However, because we grandfathered all existing clients into our new system, we don’t have the same backlog issues- we just have extremely high volumes of calls.

                                                           vi.      Chrysalis introduced Adam Tussing, a new staff member who will be available to assist with hosting appointments, calling to remind clients of upcoming appointments, and document readiness.

                                                         vii.      OUTCOME: The Greater Hartford CAN decided to start scheduling appointments for 45 minutes at a time, rather than 80 minutes.  Family assessment sites will remain 80 minute blocks, as will the triage centers.  CHR requested one hour appointment times.  For all other individual sites (The Open Hearth, MACC, Cornerstone, McKinney, Tri-Town) the assessment appointments will be scheduled for 45 minute blocks.  All assessment sites will start calling clients the day before appointments to remind them of their appointment times.

c.       VI-SPDAT Training- Tuesday, January 6 from 1-4 PM at United Way of Greater New Haven, 370 James Street, New Haven.  You must register on www.cceh.org in advance to attend this training.

                                                              i.      Amber Higgins will be doing a VI-SPDAT training at 10:00 AM on Monday at 487 Center St., Manchester.  Please email Amber if you plan to attend that training.

d.      VI-SPDAT in HMIS– Update on storing the assessment in HMIS

                                                               i.      We will be getting functionality in HMIS to complete and store the VI-SPDAT within HMIS.  Two options for storage were originally presented, the first option was for every project/grant to put in the VI-SPDAT, but only that project/grant could access it.  Because that process would not be conducive to our CAN system, instead the assessment tool will be stored in HMIS in a way that all CAN agencies can access the information.  Training on how to do that data entry will be available as the functionality is added.

e.      Info Requested from 211-

                                                               i.      No-show rate and re-schedule rate

1.       The 2014 contract between Department of Housing and 211 did not include reporting, and so while 211 is helping to provide data, it is not part of their contract to pull reports related to CAN.  They have said they will give us the data available for no-show rates in our CAN Thursday, 12/11. 

                                                             ii.      Training materials used by Housing Specialists, in order to better understand the language used by 211 staff during CAN calls.

f.        Rapid ReHousing Eligibility Form- Updates from last week’s version.  SAMH COC program only serves families.

                                                              i.      Journey Home distributed an updated version of the Rapid ReHousing Eligibility Form which more clearly indicated that only families are eligible for the SAMH COC RRH program.  Additionally, clients currently staying in Hartford can be eligible for CT RRH as long as their last zip code of permanent residence is not a City of Hartford zip code.

g.       Triage Concerns- Any concerns with immediate need protocol?

                                                               i.      On Saturday night, ImmaCare had a client sleeping in their lobby, waiting for a call back.  After communicating with 211 about this case, 211 indicated that they had some trouble contacting triage staff at certain points in the day.

                                                             ii.      Triage staff has also had difficulty contacting the different shelters at points during the day.  Some shelters do not have staff available at all times to confirm bed availability / client eligibility for shelter.  In addition, triage expressed concerns that many staff were still not updating the Google document on weekends.

                                                            iii.      There was concern expressed over the Salvation Army Marshall House hotel/motel policies- at one point a DSC tried to contact Salvation Army Marshall House in regards to hoteling a client, and was told that the client would need to call back at 6.  Because the client had no phone or transportation, this posed a problem.  Marshall House staff expressed that in the future, DSCs should ask to speak to a manager or supervisor if they are having trouble coordinating hotel/motel arrangements. 

                                                           iv.      Shelters indicated that sometimes there was no Spanish-speaking staff available at Salvation Army Marshall House, which posed some serious problems to their staff.  Salvation Army Marshall House will look into the translation issue.

                                                             v.      We discussed Cold Weather Protocol for the region.  The Greater Hartford CAN was asked to draft and submit a budget for cold weather with little turnaround time, and because there was no opportunity to bring the issue to the CAN, the funding request was to support the existing No-Freeze shelter at ImmaCare and hotel/motel funds for Salvation Army Marshall House.  The statewide CAN Cold Weather Protocols are supposed to take effect and shelter all people when it is under 32 degrees.  The State of Connecticut language indicates that Cold Weather Protocol is enacted at 28 degrees.  The City of Hartford has indicated that they will open up additional warming / emergency centers at night.  When the governor enacts Cold Weather Protocol, the shelters will remain open all day.

                                                           vi.      Shelters also brought up the fact that there are still miscommunications, some referring agencies think that if clients miss their appointment, or their appointment hasn’t happened yet that they can’t go into shelter.  We need to continue telling people how clients can access shelter.

                                                          vii.      One major concern was related to the low numbers of clients at individual men’s shelters.  ImmaCare, McKinney, and The Open Hearth all indicated that their numbers were much lower than they had been historically at a similar time of year.  Anecdotally, they had heard there were more people staying under bridges.  Staff had heard that more people were staying in airports.  We discussed 211 being a barrier for this population to entering shelter.  The clients have been told repeatedly that you have to call 211 to get into shelter, but when they go to call and face unclear communication, or long wait times, they do not complete the call and end up finding an alternate to shelter.

                                                        viii.      OUTCOME: Staff at individual men’s shelters will now be accepting men into the shelter, contacting triage to indicate that they will be staying in an available bed, and then shelter staff will assist the client with making the call to 211.  The protocol of calling 211 may have been creating a barrier that kept many people out of shelter.  For the time being, individual men’s shelters will try this method and see if it allows more people to come into shelter. 

3.      Working Groups:  Because so much of the meeting was spent discussing triage and shelter bed availability, the group did not divide into working groups at this meeting.

a.      Duty Services Coordinators:

                                                              i.      Have sites been hosting interim assessment appointments?

1.      Yes, sites have been hosting these appointments, and will continue to do so to try and shorten the length of time between calling 211 and having an appointment.

                                                            ii.      Challenges or feedback for the system?

1.      We addressed feedback and challenges earlier in the meeting, as a larger group.

b.      Housing Referral Group:

                                                              i.      Update to the Universal Housing Application-Update from Journey Home

1.      We are waiting for our vendor to help with a security enhancement and help us pull certain reports. 

2.      Providers wondered what the timeframe was on having a final, workable referral list.  By December 31^st there will be a new award for supportive housing, and all those slots will be for prioritized clients- providers will need to fill those openings quickly.

a.      All case management staff should be updating UHAs with their clients to include VI-SPDAT scores, and following the upgrade, people will need to go into the system and update information about length and number of episodes of homelessness.

                                                            ii.      Rapid ReHousing – Have referrals been coming in from assessment appointments, and how have you been tracking your referrals?

1.      CT RRH has received an overwhelming volume of referrals since the 12/3 meeting, and so the RRH group will be meeting soon to discuss data tracking and trying to distribute referrals between different programs.

                                                          iii.      Housing Placement Coordinators- Which staff person will report availability?

1.      The current list of HPCs was passed around so that agencies could continue to add the appropriate contact persons.

                                                           iv.      Housing Availability Report- If you know of an opening in your program that is coming up, please use the Housing Availability Report that we distributed last week, and we can try to start planning how we will work from one list in the future.

c.       Core Review Group- How will we proceed with referrals to this group moving forward?

                                                              i.      First Client- Submitted for review by Ruby at Salvation Army Marshall House.

                                                            ii.      Client was referred after 4 calls to the triage center since 11/17.  Client has been referred to multiple shelters and was unable to be accommodated at any, client presented at a fourth shelter that was unable to accommodate her specific needs.  When client presented at the shelters that were not able to accommodate, there were altercations with staff in each location.  Client just moved to Connecticut from New York to start her job, working third shift at the airport hotel, and has no transportation, and no local friends or family.  Because of client’s specific shelter needs, the triage center will try to connect them with Tri-Town shelter, if any beds are available.  Ruby will also discuss options like Supportive Recovery Housing and Rapid ReHousing, as well as the possibility of the client relocating to New York.  We will revisit this case on 12/17.

d.      Oversight Group- How will we hold programs accountable and track data?

4.      ANNOUNCEMENTS

a.      We will be meeting at the same location next week, 237 Hamilton St., Hartford.  We will meet on the second floor, in the administrative offices for My Sisters’ Place.

b.      Transitional Housing Providers- please stay after the meeting to discuss how the programs in the region will operating the unified referral list for transitional housing.

GH CAN Coordinators:

Matt Morgan, Journey Home  matt.morgan@journeyhomect.org 

Crane W Cesario, CRMHC – DMHAS   crane.cesario@ct.gov