Greater Hartford CAN Meeting 7/22/15

Greater Hartford Coordinated Access Network

Meeting Notes

Wednesday, July 22^nd, 2015

Next Meeting: Wednesday August 12^th, 2015

In Attendance: Janet Bermudez – MANNA, Hands On Hartford Suzan Bibisi – Tabor House Cordelia Brady – The Open Hearth Sonia Brown – Supportive Housing, CRT Crane Cesario – Hartford COC/ DHMAS Marcel Cicero – East Hartford Shelter, CRT Roger Clark – ImmaCare Rebecca Copeland – Supportive Housing, CHR Stephanie Corbin – Community Health Network Rosa DeJesus – Mercy Housing Fred Faulkner – The Open Hearth Bryan Flint – Cornerstone Nate Fox – Center Church Amanda Girardin – Journey Home Ruby Givens-Hewitt – My Sisters’ Place Tenesha Grant – Mercy Housing Mollie Greenwood – Journey Home Andrea Hakian – CHR LaQuista Harris – VA

Amber Higgins – CHR                 Mercedes Johnson – Interval House Brittany King – The Open Hearth Sister Maureen – House of Bread Philomena McGee – CHR Matt Morgan – Journey Home Malika Nelson - CHR Theresa Nicholson – Chrysalis Center Roxan Noble – Chrysalis Center Heather Pilarcik – South Park Inn Amy Robinson – SSVF, CRT Chris Robinson – Chrysalis Center Iris Ruiz – Interval House Sarah Simonelli – Chrysalis Center Jose Vega – McKinney Shelter, CRT Gwendolyn Williams – Department of Social Services Ymonne Wilson – Supportive Housing, CRT Tamara Womack – My Sisters’ Place

1.      Introductions:

a.      Today we’re celebrating a few things- LaQuista Harris of the VA is (sadly) going to be leaving us soon to move down south, Tenesha Grant of Mercy Housing is getting married soon, and Tamara Womack is having a baby soon! 

2.      FY 2016 ESG Contracts/Rapid ReHousing – Andrea Hakian

a.      Some new programs through CHR started 7/1 and they will be taking referrals to these programs in the next couple of weeks.  The new program is a Rapid ReHousing program for low barrier clients with limited short term assistance.

b.      The longer term Rapid ReHousing program will be coming online in October, and will be operated by CHR Manchester.  We are still waiting to find out whether clients from the municipalities (including City of Hartford) will be eligible for this longer term Rapid ReHousing program. 

c.       In addition to the short term Rapid ReHousing program, there will be a small pool of diversion funding available through CHR at both Enfield and Manchester sites that can hopefully prevent households on the brink of homelessness from entering the system.

d.      For both the new short-term Rapid ReHousing program as well as these new diversion funds, we still need to determine how we as a CAN will ensure that all clients have equal access to these resources. 

3.      Announcements

a.      Hard to Engage Veterans Protocol from SSVF (p.3) – Amy Robinson

                                                              i.      At our last meeting, we had discussed determining protocols for how we could start to handle clients who refused to engage with staff.  Amy Robinson of SSVF provided us with the guidelines that SSVF providers use for difficult to engage veterans.  There are three phases of engagement in this system:

1.      Phase 1: Staff make 4 attempts over the course of a month to engage the client, at least weekly.  An attempt includes a phone call, visit to last known address, or visit to last known agency.  Attempts should vary between morning, afternoon, and evening.

2.      Phase 2: Staff team up with outreach staff from another agency (for example, SSVF-VA partnership) and repeat the steps in phase 1 for an additional month.  Collaboration strategy depends on nature of initial refusal.

3.      Phase 3: Veterans are moved to “Hard To Engage” list and are not counted in general statistics on prevalence of veteran homelessness.  Outreach efforts continue at least quarterly. 

                                                            ii.      Amy also announced that if any of our homeless service providers encounter a veteran, you can call the homeless team at the VA.  You could also contact SSVF.

                                                          iii.      Related to veterans, we discussed a challenge that some veteran-specific housing programs are facing.  Because we are close to ending chronic veteran homelessness, programs who had committed to house that population specifically need to work with another population.

1.      However, there are a number of Veteran-only COC funded programs, so rather than starting to take other chronically homeless clients into their program, they must continue to house veterans, because that is what their grant designates.

b.      Cold Weather Planning Meeting – date and time TBD.  All are welcome to attend!

                                                              i.      We want to start planning for winter early this year.  There had been a meeting originally scheduled for 7/29 but a number of people weren’t available for that date, and had important experience and knowledge on this.  We are trying to be proactive in our planning this year, and will get the word out about a future meeting. 

c.       Full SPDAT Training – We need to prioritize 11-12 staff from the region who can attend.

                                                              i.      The Greater Hartford CAN has been charged to identify every client in the region by name, vulnerability, and length of time homeless.  The VI-SPDAT tool that we have been using is a triage tool, but is not a full assessment tool.  The VI-SPDAT, because it is based solely on client self-report is not always accurately reflective of client need.

                                                            ii.      In our CAN we developed an Assessment Concern Form, because we believed that some scores were not accurate, and we wanted to discuss them.  The creator of the VI-SPDAT has encouraged us to use the full SPDAT instead, to examine cases objectively. 

                                                          iii.      CCEH along with the Department of Housing has helped to get the creator of the VI-SPDAT to provide a training that would be free to providers.  CCEH has placed registration information for this training on their website, and spaces are limited.  We hope that representatives from most of our providers will be able to attend this training.

4.      Statewide CAN Functions, Governance, and Policy Development – Fred Faulkner

a.      Matt Morgan and Fred Faulkner have been attending meetings to discuss statewide CAN functions, governance, and policy development as representatives of the GH CAN.  Crane Cesario has attended these meetings as a representative of the Hartford COC. 

b.      Fred Faulkner reported that it has been really interesting to see how differently CANs are operating.  Right now, we are really focused on our Coordinated Exit plans- other areas don’t have this same focus. 

c.       This group is meeting to start developing policies, to discuss the basic principles of CAN.  These meetings are also helping to guide conversations about CAN oversight group- people are doing oversight differently in different parts of the state.

                                                              i.      Moving forward, we’ll want oversight to look at monitoring, look at our outcomes, and look at decision making. 

1.      An example where some help from an oversight group could be helpful was mentioned by Theresa, of Chrysalis center.  She said that in some programs, clients are working under the table without identifying the income they’re receiving, which could negatively impact performance measures.  Theresa has created a new “No-Income” form, and is waiting for approval from HUD to start using this form for her programs.  These, and other issues of performance could be important for an oversight group to examine over time. 

5.      Priority Level / VI-SPDAT Discussion – Decision on how to proceed with our prioritization protocol (p.4)

a.      After last week, we needed to make a decision about how to set up our priority list.  In the past, we had interpreted HUD’s guidance about how to prioritize chronically homeless clients to mean that clients who are long term homeless, but with a low VI-SPDAT score, should be prioritized over clients with a higher VI-SPDAT score.

                                                              i.      Following HUD’s July 2014 guidance, we had previously been prioritizing clients with one year or more homeless over clients who had higher VI-SPDAT scores and shorter episodes of homelessness. 

                                                            ii.      Statewide leadership has indicated that clients with a score of 10 should be housed first, before housing clients with lower scores.  Because of this guidance, we needed to revisit the way we had been prioritizing clients for permanent supportive housing.  The VI-SPDAT tool recommends Permanent Supportive Housing for clients who score 10 or higher.  It seemed challenging that some of our clients who are chronically homeless with a long history of homelessness were scoring lower than 10, and so could not be prioritized over clients with higher scores.

                                                          iii.      We have now modified the levels in which chronically homeless clients are being prioritized for permanent supportive housing. 

1.      First priority will be chronically homeless clients with a score of 12 or higher, who have at least one year of time literally homeless.

2.      Second priority will be chronically homeless clients with a score of 10 or 11 who have at least one year of time literally homeless.

3.      Third priority will be chronically homeless clients with a score of 12 or higher but have less than one year of time literally homeless

4.      Fourth priority will be chronically homeless clients with a score of 10 or 11 who have less than one year of time literally homeless

5.      Fifth priority will be chronically homeless clients with a score below 10 who have at least one year of time literally homeless

6.      Sixth priority will be chronically homeless clients with a score below 10 who have less than one year of time literally homeless. 

                                                           iv.      The GH CAN voted to adopt these new prioritization levels for all Permanent Supportive Housing that has been prioritized for clients who are chronically homeless.

6.      Review of Chronic Maybes List

a.      Staff were asked to review the Chronic Maybes list, and if they had any notes, to hand back their copies of the list to Mollie or Amanda of Journey Home before they left.

7.      When do we remove someone from our active lists?

a.      After discussing the protocols from SSVF related to challenging client engagement, we are wondering about when to move clients off of the active priority list, and onto another holding list.

b.      We were wondering how long we should wait, once a client is MIA, before moving them over to a missing list, specifically.  For many clients, housing providers report that they were unable to locate the clients, and they don’t have recent shelter enrollments in HMIS.  At what point should these clients be placed on a holding page, until they resurface?

                                                              i.      The group determined that every 30 days Journey Home should review the priority list, and clients who have not been seen for 30 days can be placed on the MIA list.  Outreach staff should then help to review this MIA list on a monthly basis, to make sure that nobody has seen these clients recently. 

                                                            ii.      We also decided it needs to be an active decision to move someone- at least one provider needs to say that they have not been able to make contact with a client before they will be considered for relocation onto the MIA/holding list. 

c.       New Referrals were made to CRT’s Project Teach Permanent.  Because this is a transitional housing program that requires chronically homeless clients, the referrals were the bottom 10 people on the priority list. 

d.      Crane announced a new opening coming soon at Sue Ann Shay Place.

GH CAN Chairs:

Matt Morgan – matt.morgan@journeyhomect.org

Crane Cesario – crane.cesario@ct.gov

GH CAN Parking Lot: Items for Continued Discussion

#	Category	Challenge
1	Shelter search through 211	Clients churning, high shelter turnover
2	Shelter search through 211	People staying out of doors to avoid the 211 process
3	Documentation	Challenges gathering documentation of homeless history
4	Data Quality	Multiple client records in HMIS
5	Shelter search through 211	Empty beds in shelters
6	Case Conferencing	Clients who no-show for multiple appointments
7	Data Quality	Misrepresentation of homeless status due to HMIS assessments not checking current status.
8	Shelter search through 211	Clients calling to get a hotel instead of shelter
9	Data Collection	Identifying/validating progress matching clients housed through CAN to Zero 2016
10	Funding	Having staff allocated for CAN Functions (navigation, management, etc)
11	Identifying appropriate clients for CAN	Backlog of CAN appointments
12	Navigation	Identifying clients who are not attached to navigation / need help gathering documentation