Greater Hartford CAN Meeting 12/31/14

Greater Hartford - Coordinated Access Network

 Meeting Notes

December 31, 2014

In Attendance:

Crane Cesario – DMHAS

Roger Clark - ImmaCare

Bryan Flint- Cornerstone

Rosemary Flowers – My Sisters’ Place

Mollie Greenwood- Journey Home

Heather Pilarcik – South Park Inn

Jamie Randolph – East Hartford Shelter

Amy Robinson- CRT SSVF

Barbara Shaw – Hands On Hartford

Jose Vega – McKinney Shelter

Tamara Womack – My Sisters’ Place

1.      Introductions & GH-CAN Meeting Notes for last week, 12/17/2014 (emailed and attached)

2.      Updates:

a.      Assessment Appointment Schedule – Currently booked out until March 16^th

                                                              i.      We are currently booked out until mid-March, but staff at Chrysalis have stepped up to take on some additional appointment slots, to try and reduce the amount of time between calls to 211.  Also, we said that we are only scheduling appointments for people who are 2 days away from homelessness or less.

b.      CA Data Quality Updates- DQ updates will be distributed to each site.

                                                              i.      Some sites were concerned that they could not tell if their data was being entered correctly, and Tamara Womack from My Sisters’ Place reminded everyone that if you don’t click all the right buttons, your information may not save.

c.       VI-SPDAT Training – Tuesday, January 6^th from 1-4PM 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.

d.      CAN HMIS Training – Available training slots will be posted January 6^th. 

e.      Airport Trip- Scheduled for January 5^th at 7PM.  If you would like to join this group please contact Sara Salomons at salomonss@crtct.org.

                                                              i.      Crane has been in communications with the state troopers and airport administration regarding stays at the airport, and have discussed the fact that policies are changing, and people will no longer be able to stay.  Their policy is posted on the wall, but there is no implementation plan of how to stop people from staying in the airport.  The state troopers, airport security, and airport administrators are interested in collaborating with our service providers to resolve this situation.

                                                            ii.      Staff in the GH CAN have heard that the airport has been used for a long time, but only by a select few.  Now, this year we are hearing reports of 30-40 people going to the airport, and airport staff has started telling people they cannot stay.  We will be going up on Monday, January 5^th, around 7:00 PM to ask a few questions, and try to get a sense of why people are choosing to stay at the airport, and why there are so many more than usual. 

                                                          iii.      We are planning to try and bring some snacks, some comfort kits, and bus passes if people are able to provide them.

                                                           iv.      We discussed a family unit that has visited the airport, and has been a longtime client in our region, and what options they may have for housing.  This conversation reminded us that the goal of this new coordinated process is precisely to have these kinds of discussions and collaborative conversations about how to serve the most vulnerable people in our community.

1.      We then discussed a few scenarios people have seen doing outreach, people sleeping under bridges and down by the river. 

f.        211 Workflow – Distributed last week via email to the CANs statewide.

g.      VI-SPDAT Master List- Who has done VI-SPDAT scores, but is not in CA HMIS or the UHA?

                                                              i.      We discussed creating a master VI-SPDAT score list, to gather information from HMIS, the UHA, and scores that were done on hard-copies at shelters.  Journey Home wants to compile this master list, to make sure scores can be put in all the appropriate locations to best serve clients.   Journey Home will send around a chart with all the data elements they are hoping to collect for this community master list.

3.      Working Groups:

a.      Duty Services Coordinators:

                                                              i.      Homeless definitions- Please remember we can only make Rapid ReHousing referrals for clients who are literally homeless at the time of their appointment (see p. 7-8)

                                                            ii.      Rapid ReHousing Referrals- Moving forward, please make all referrals for Rapid ReHousing through the survey here: http://goo.gl/forms/HPa3W0vkca

                                                          iii.      Duty Services Coordinator Manual – Available online

b.      Housing Referral Group:

                                                              i.      Interim Housing Plan – Using the VI-SPDAT reports, we can begin to pull clients with the highest scores in the UHA.

1.      Journey Home has created some reports we can use to temporarily pull clients with the highest VI-SPDAT scores.  However, so far out of the 328 individuals and couples in the UHA, only 67 had VI-SPDAT scores in the system.  Out of the 52 families with dependent children in the system, only 9 had VI-SPDAT scores.  This workaround will help us prioritize clients while the UHA goes through the process of an upgrade, but it cannot be a truly prioritized list unless more clients have VI-SPDAT scores entered.

4.      ANNOUNCEMENTS

a.      Happy New Year, everyone!

GH CAN Coordinators:

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

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