Greater Hartford CAN Meeting 5/13/15

Greater Hartford Coordinated Access Network

Meeting Notes

Wednesday, May 13th, 2015

Next Meeting: Wednesday May 20^th, 2015

In Attendance: Brian Baker – South Park Inn Shannon Baldassario – MACC Janet Bermudez – Hands On Hartford Aisha Brown – CHR Traci Burdick – CHN Crane Cesario – DMHAS Roger Clark – ImmaCare Rebecca Copeland – CHR Stephanie Corbin – CHN Bryan Dixon – InterCommunity Alfredo Echevarria – ImmaCare Fred Faulkner – The Open Hearth Bryan Flint – Cornerstone Rosemary Flowers – My Sisters’ Place Chris Fortier – The Open Hearth Nate Fox – Center Church Sevasti Galanis – Chrysalis Center Amanda Girardin – Journey Home

Ruby Givens-Hewitt – My Sisters’ Place Mollie Greenwood – Journey Home Brittany King – The Open Hearth Philomena McGee – CHR Enfield Matt Morgan – Journey Home Theresa Nicholson – Chrysalis Center Veronica Nixon – My Sisters’ Place Roxan Noble – Chrysalis Center Heather Pilarcik – South Park Inn Chris Robinson – Chrysalis Center Amy Robinson- CRT SSVF Sarah Simonelli – Chrysalis Center Rob Soderberg – CHR Sheena Stringer – Chrysalis Center Sandra Terry – CRT Sarah Trench – Journey Home Jose Vega – CRT McKinney Shelter Tamara Womack – My Sisters’ Place

1.       Introductions & GH CAN Meeting Notes for last week, 5/6/15, were emailed.

a.       Happy CANniversary!  This meeting marks one year of weekly GH CAN planning and implementation meetings.  Thank you so much to everyone who has contributed time, talent, and effort to implementing this new process!

2.       GH CAN Stats Update:

a.       One statistic that other communities are collecting is information on persons who are housed that are not chronically homeless.  We know that statewide communities are tracking total number of people housed, and we want to make sure our region is also able to report on all the good work being done by transitional housing providers and rapid re-housing providers.

                                                               i.      We would like to capture this information in two separate time periods:

1.       Non-chronic households housed from November 17, 2014 – March 10 2015.

2.       Non-chronic households housed from March 11 – present.

                                                             ii.      By capturing the information from those two blocks of time, we hope to gather data about what our housing process has looked like since the GH CAN went live, and what the housing process has looked like during this 100 Day Campaign.  We believe that some of that information can be gathered from HMIS, but are asking that providers help us in gathering this information so we can better review the work that has been done in this year.

3.       How do we reduce the backlog of individual men’s assessment appointments?

a.       In other regions of the state many agencies have taken this on together.  In some areas, there has been a week-long push to complete assessments on everyone to eliminate backlog.  Other agencies volunteered, and staff were encouraged to devote time to this task.

b.      There was one suggestion to hold a similar kind of campaign in our region, but in light of the recent Document Fair and all the efforts that went into making that day a success, we do not know that it would be a successful campaign. 

c.       We also discussed having a push for staff to take time and visit soup kitchens to meet with clients.

d.      Ultimately, the GH CAN has made the determination that for clients who have already completed a VI-SPDAT, they do not need to complete a GH CAN appointment.  Journey Home will compare the list of upcoming appointments with the list of clients who already have VI-SPDATs completed, and work with 211 to cancel all unnecessary appointments.  We hope that by grandfathering in clients who have already been assessed by the VI-SPDAT tool we can limit the time we are further booking out appointments, and get closer to real-time assessments after clients call 211. 

4.       Utilization of CAN Resources-

a.       The main focus throughout this 100 Day Campaign has been housing the chronically homeless, primarily with the available Permanent Supportive Housing units.  Because the GH CAN adopted HUD’s prioritization for PSH units, we wanted to refresh the group on what order we were prioritizing chronically homeless clients for available units.  Highest priority is the first group, with subsequent groups being served after we can no longer locate a client who falls into the previous category.

                                                               i.      Chronically homeless with longest history of homelessness (one continuous year or 4+ episodes within the last three years totaling more than 365 days) and most severe service needs.

                                                             ii.      Chronically homeless with the longest history of homelessness (one continuous year OR 4+ episodes within the last three years totaling more than 365 days)

                                                            iii.      Chronically homeless with the most severe service needs

                                                           iv.      All other chronically homeless.

b.      With these criteria in mind, we know that we do not have enough permanent supportive housing for all of the clients currently on our priority list, and so need to start really looking at how to best incorporate Rapid ReHousing, transitional housing, roommate situations, and other innovative housing situations in order to reach our goal of housing 100 clients in the remaining time.

5.       100 Day Team Updates

a.       On behalf of the 100 Day Team we want to say the biggest THANK YOU for volunteering at last Friday’s Homeless Document Fair!  We are not sure the total number of people we saw, but believe it is between 150 and 175 clients. 

b.      We completed 47 Birth Certificate applications, 57 VI-SPDATs, 30 Universal Housing Applications, and 23 replacement Social Security Card applications.  We are waiting on other reports from other vendors for the totals they served.  We had at least 51 volunteers registered who attended, and we couldn’t have done it without them!  The 100 Day Team will be formally debriefing the meeting next Tuesday, to talk about what went well, and how we could improve an event like this for the future.  If anyone has feedback on the document fair, they should email Heather Pilarcik at hpilarcik@southparkinn.org

c.       A lot of people around the table expressed that they had heard such positive feedback both from providers and clients throughout the course of the day. 

d.      The 100 Day Team’s last push is to work with all of the GH CAN, especially those who have been identified as navigators.  We want to get people moved towards posting more keys, and we want to make sure that everyone knows that now is the ideal situation for available resources.  We still have a lot of discretionary funding available, and we need to make sure all the navigators helping people to get housed are utilizing the funding. 

e.      Something the team noticed in their meeting today was that there are a number of housing referrals that were made months ago in which the clients are still not into housing.  The team has some process maps, and knows that there are a lot of different steps in the housing process.  If any of your hold-ups are financial please request funding from Journey Home.  You can email Tamika.riley@journeyhomect.org with a discretionary funds request form.

f.        Next week is the 75 Day check-in with Leadership.  We are hoping to show a slideshow from the event, and share photos from the day.  The 100 Day Team will be laying down any final requests for the rest of the campaign to the leadership team.

6.       Chronic Homeless Veteran’s Check-In

a.       Staff did not report knowing of any new chronically homeless veterans who were not currently engaged with services.

b.      For PSH veteran’s programs, since we do not believe we can currently locate a chronically homeless veteran, programs will be able to accept high service need veterans who are not chronically homeless.  Moving forward, Matt and Crane will be helping to draft a letter that programs can utilize in case they are unable to locate a chronically homeless household who is eligible for their unit, and are therefore housing the next prioritized population.

7.       Housing Rate Vocabulary for Zero:2016

a.       At last week’s meeting we discussed what kind of language we want to use when describing the rate at which people are being housed through our programs.  The options presented were Housing Connections Rate, Key Connections Rate, Key Housing Connections Rate, Lease-up Rate, or the option to write in another choice. 

b.      Votes will be counted and a decision on this language will be announced next week.

8.       Mission Statement Plan – Bryan Flint of Cornerstone and Crane Cesario of DMHAS will draft a few suggestions for GH CAN mission statements for next week’s meeting.  We will discuss these options then.

9.       Peer Health Navigators for Community Conversations - North Central Regional Mental Health Board is recruiting Peer Health Navigators to participate in 12 community conversations at four different sites.  Discussion groups will be made up of 8-10 adults. “Conversations” will take place at locations in: New Britain, Hartford, Middletown and Bridgeport.  Navigators may elect to participate in one or several.  One conversation consists of 4 hours = two sessions of two hours ($35 per session) adults must commit to both sessions making up one conversation to participate.  A $70 reimbursement per conversation will be provided.  A one-time training prior to conversation start-up will take place and reimbursed at $20.

a.       The Peer Navigators’ role is to briefly share (if questioned by group members) experiences in accessing health care, what resources are out there for adults, and minimal information pertaining to your recovery (using lived experience).   Shared recovery information is needed only as it relates to a question.  Public speaking skills and a lengthy recovery stories before an audience are not required.  The goal for this project is to both educate on how to access services supporting wellness and to create a comfortable environment to discuss mental health and/or addiction issues.  The conversations will inform educational materials about health navigation.  All Peer Navigators’ names and personal information will be held confidential.

b.      This is a time-limited recruitment, if you, a peer or member of your organization is interested, please contact Phoebe Hamilton at NCRMHB, 860. 667-6388, 11-4:30 pm or email phamilton@ncrmhb.org.

10.   Hundred Day Challenge: The 100 Day Team would like to announce a new challenge to incentivize the navigation process.  For the next two weeks, we are going to see who can work towards housing as many clients as possible.  The navigator with the most clients who are housed in this two week period will win a $100 Visa gift card.  The hope of this challenge is to incentivize more staff to take on the role of navigator in addition to their current position, and to make sure that everyone hears the ticking clock.  We are more than halfway through this 100 Day Campaign, and there is still a lot of work to be done.

11.   Pending Referrals – The group reviewed all pending referrals on the prioritized list for a status update.

12.   Review Chronic Maybe List – This list is composed of people who have self-reported chronic status in an assessment in HMIS, but whose shared timelines in HMIS do not verify that they have the required length of homeless history.  Journey Home is asking that any staff who believes a client on this list is indeed chronically homeless to please help gather shelter records from their sites or provide outreach documentation when needed to verify length of homeless history.

13.   New Referrals – NS Enfield, S+C, 7 to Chrysalis BOS, 1 trans to proj heart, 3 transfers to CABHI.

a.       A handful of new referrals were made.  One referral was made to Next Steps Enfield, one to Shelter Plus Care, seven were made to CABHI Balance of State, one referral was transferred to Project Hearrt, and 3 referrals were transferred to CABHI Balance of State.

Announcements:

                This was Shannon Baldassario’s last GH CAN meeting because she is going to have her baby soon.  Sarah Melquist from MACC will be stepping in to fill her role shortly.