GREATER HARTFORD COORDINATED ACCESS NETWORK
Meeting Notes
WEDNESDAY, February 4th, 2015
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In Attendance
Rubi Alegria – Mercy Housing
Brian Baker – South Park Inn
Shannon Baldassario – MACC
Sandy Barry – Salvation Army Marshall House
Steve Bigler – CRT
Sonia Brown – CRT
Wendy Caruso – 211
Roger Clark – ImmaCare
Bryan Dixon – InterCommunity
Brenda Earle – Dept. of Housing
Fred Faulkner – The Open Hearth
Rosemary Flowers – My Sisters’ Placce
Nate Fox – Center Church
Clarissa Garcia – ImmaCare
Mary Gillette – Mercy Housing
Amanda Girardin – Journey Home
Ruby Givens-Hewitt – Salvation Army Marshall House
Tenesha Grant – Mercy Housing
Mollie Greenwood – Journey Home
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Andrea Hakian - CHR
Amber Higgins – CHR
Philomena McGee – CHR Enfield
Matt Morgan – Journey Home
Theresa Nicholson – Chrysalis Center
John Oliver – Chrysalis Center
Heather Pilarcik – South Park Inn
Patricia Pollicina – Chrysalis Center
Jamie Randolph – CRT / East Hartford Shelter
Chris Robinson – Chrysalis Center
Iris Ruiz – Interval House
Sara Salomons – CRT
Barbara Shaw – Hands on Hartford
Sheena Stringer – Chrysalis Center
Sandra Terry – CRT
Sarah Trench – Journey Home
Tamara Womack – My Sisters’ Place
Laura Robidoux – 211
Aisha Brown – CHR Enfield
Melinda Clarke – CRT Veteran’s Crossing
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1.
Introductions & GH-CAN Meeting
Notes for last week, 1/14/2014 (emailed)
2. Updates:
i.
Several
more trainings have been posted, and many of the trainings still have
availability. If any of your staff will
be assisting with assessment appointments, please have them register for an
upcoming training as soon as possible.
b. Shadowing at 211 – Updates from Mollie
i.
211
has been steadily increasing their staff in order to try and handle the call
volume as more regions have come online with CAN. Within the next week, 28 staff at 211 will be
fully trained to take housing calls. In
July, 211’s capacity for housing related calls was 4-6 people, so their current
staffing is a huge increase.
ii.
Call
times continue to fluctuate- longest wait times are typically on Mondays, but
call times also increase with any extreme weather condition. Typically the call volume is heaviest
mid-morning and early evening.
c. PIT Update – Sheltered
PIT will be 2/18 from 7-11 PM, unsheltered PIT will be 2/19 from 4-7 AM.
i.
Training
for the sheltered and unsheltered PIT count has been combined for this
year. Training will take place at 5:30
on the February 18th at the Lumsden Center at CRT.
d. Assessment Appointment Schedule – Currently booked out until 5/11 for individual men, out
till 4/29 for women and 4/20 for families.
i.
When
we first went live with CAN, every week of calls we scheduled two weeks further
out. After we changed our eligibility to
only schedule appointments for people who were 2 days away from homelessness,
we started booking only one week further.
However, over time we have booked very far out.
ii.
According
to data from CA HMIS as of January 30th, information for our region
is as follows:
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Total
number of appointments scheduled since November 17, 2014
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1,428
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Number of
clients who have scheduled multiple appointments
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147
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Number of
appointments scheduled between November 17th and January 30th
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635
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Number of
clients who completed appointments in HMIS (note: this list may include
people who attended 2 appointments)
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164
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1.
Out
of the 635 appointments that had been scheduled up until this data was
collected, only 164 of those appointments were attended (roughly 25%). This means that the Greater Hartford CAN has
approximately a 75% no-show rate for assessment appointments.
iii.
We
discussed the fact that the farther away an appointment is scheduled, the less
likely it is that our clients will attend that appointment.
iv.
We
discussed the possibility of operating a drop in center, rather than
appointments. Chrysalis Center and
Center Church both volunteered to start operating drop-in centers as soon as
they are CA HMIS trained on February 12th. Mollie will touch base with both groups to
determine what times they would be interested in operating drop-in centers. In the past, when staff from Chrysalis tried
to help with the backlog he started calling everyone whose appointments were
scheduled for the next week- after meeting with those clients, 211 could
back-fill their appointment slots so people could be seen sooner.
v.
As
a reminder, any staff who encounters duplicate client ID’s in HMIS should
contact the Nutmeg Helpdesk by emailing help@nutmeghelp.com with the multiple client IDs.
Staff should indicate which is the correct client ID.
vi.
We
discussed what impact the PIT would have on CAN. If we are performing VI-SPDATs at the
shelters on the night of PIT, do all of those people still need to complete a
GH CAN appointment? This is a question
we will need to bring to CCEH for statewide guidance. Journey Home will follow up on this question.
vii.
We
discussed the systems being used in other regions- some areas have drop in
centers rather than set appointment times.
viii.
We
also discussed the efforts some regions have taken to try and eliminate their
backlog. In New Britain/Bristol CAN they
had a large group of providers who don’t usually do assessments help out for a
week, and they cleared their backed-up appointments significantly.
e. Transitional Housing Priorities – We need to officially adopt priorities for our transitional
housing units, we have a transitional housing unit to fill.
i.
Originally
we had discussed using VI-SPDAT scores of 4 or lower to fill our transitional
housing units. We do not want to put
people who are chronically homeless into transitional programs, because they
would lose their chronic status and become ineligible for PSH programs.
ii.
The
proposed priorities were as follows:
1.
Priority
Level 1: Literally Homeless
Individuals or Families coming from a shelter, place not meant for human
habitation, hotel/motel paid for by charity or government agency, or an
institution where they resided for less than 90 days and were literally
homeless prior to entering that institution, who are NOT chronically homeless,
with preference given to those who have higher VI-SPDAT scores, with longest
length of homelessness as a tiebreaker.
2.
Priority
Level 2: Literally Homeless Individuals coming from transitional housing
programs with preference given to those who have higher VI-SPDAT scores, with
longest length of homelessness as a tiebreaker.
3.
Priority
level 3: Households at Imminent Risk of Homelessness (Category II) with
preference given to those who have higher VI-SPDAT scores, with longest length
of homelessness as a tiebreaker.
4.
Priority
Level 4: Households at risk of homelessness with preference given to those
who have higher VI-SPDAT scores, with longest length of homelessness as a
tiebreaker.
iii.
South
Park Inn’s Transitional Program and Mercy Housing’s Transitional Program (St.
Elizabeth’s) indicated that the way their programs operated may need further
discussion as to how they would work as part of the community referral
process. Matt will follow up with both
programs.
iv.
Additionally,
the transitional programs expressed that they may need to meet more frequently
than once weekly to fill openings in their programs- this is a topic that will
require further discussion.
v.
We
will continue to investigate how property managers for scattered site
transitional programs will work with this new community system for accepting
clients into programs.
f.
Cold Weather Protocol – What gaps still exist in the
system, and how can we fill them?
i.
Cold
Weather Protocol was distributed to the meeting attendees, and can be found
here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13rUD0gT61GdHQ6ygIA3IcSFi0NFgxGIUyY2dA3kY6Cs/edit?usp=sharing
ii.
We
still have a gap in our system- after shelters are totally full, the City of
Hartford has committed to opening warming centers when there are 20 or more
people who still need shelter. However,
if we have 13 people who need shelter, there is no guarantee of a warming
center.
iii.
Last
night, 12 people presented at St. Elizabeth’s because they did not have shelter
for that night. Extra case managers came
in to help make calls to 211. Some
people ended up staying at South Park Inn, others were hoteled for the
night.
iv.
211
indicated that they had St. Elizabeth’s house listed as 24 hour drop-in center
during cold weather, and that was why people had been referred there so often.
v.
We
discussed the need to have a centralized place where we can communicate with
clients between curfew and around 8PM.
Shelters often appear to be full at curfew, and so triage staff say that
there are no beds available. However,
after curfew it often turns out that beds are not available, but we have no way
to reach out to those clients who presented earlier. As a result, there have been nights where
beds have gone un-filled because there was no way to connect with those clients
who called before or at curfew time.
vi.
Center
Church has stepped up and volunteered to help coordinate a central location for
people to stay as a holding place until after curfew. However, we still need to develop a plan for
clients who still cannot access a bed later in the night, especially if it is
fewer than 20 people in need of a space.
3. Working Groups:
a. Duty Services Coordinators:
i.
Any
feedback on the system?
1.
A
result of the major weather events from the last few weeks is that some sites
have had 100% no-show rates.
2.
A
number of sites have been trying to call clients in advance of their
appointments, to remind them that they are approaching, but are often unable to
get through to the clients.
3.
We
revisited the fact that many people who are in need of homeless services are
having trouble navigating this new
system, which could be part of why so many people we see at these appointments
don’t appear to need the services we provide- our population for appointment
scheduling is a little broader than those being served in shelter.
4.
There
was some frustration in the group that we were talking about moving away from
the system of appointments that we had structured so much over the previous
months. The reason we had needed to
structure the system based around appointments rather than drop ins, is that we
had staff who could only dedicate very limited time slots to this system. It was because of our staff limitations that
we had originally decided on an appointment structure, and we were considering
different strategies now because we were booked so far out, and were seeing so
few people presenting for their appointments.
5.
While
shelters are trying to perform interim assessments with their clients, there
are some shelters whose turnover is increasing with CAN, and so many clients
aren’t there long enough for a case management meeting.
6.
We
wondered whether it would be possible to build in some sort of scheduling
mechanism into HMIS to send a reminder to case managers when clients are
getting close to their appointment time, so they could be reminded.
b. Housing Referral Group:
i.
Housing
openings have been submitted through the Housing Availability Report, and using
that information were able to match the top prioritized clients to upcoming
housing openings. CRT reported openings in
Project TEACH Permanent and Permanent Supportive Housing Program, and My
Sisters’ Place had previously reported an opening. Chrysalis indicated that there would be an
opening in Veteran’s Crossing.
ii.
Based
on the information we have now, we have located the top few clients who are
ready to be matched with PSH, top few who are ready to be matched with TH. Amanda presented each case, and members of
the group were able to provide background information about whereabouts and
other relevant information on the clients in question. Each of the agencies said they would follow
up on those top clients to determine whereabouts and help get them
document-ready for housing. For cases
where the HRG did not know current client whereabouts, they were presented to
shelter staff from the DSC group afterwards.
1.
Journey
Home has been working to compile a Master List of basic client information as
it relates to housing. This list shows
us all the clients who have completed a UHA or a CAN appointment in our region. We are hoping to collect more hard-copy
VI-SPDATs from shelters so that we can enter their information as well. The hope is that this list will help us to
identify clients who are either high-service needs (according to VI-SPDAT
score) or who are chronic according to their CAN appointment or UHA.
2.
We
discussed document readiness, and whether that was up to the housing providers
or shelter providers to ensure. Right
now, we know that we have a number of housing slots becoming available soon,
and we will need to make sure a lot of clients are document ready in
preparation for these units.
3.
My
Sisters’ Place filled their opening with one of the clients that Journey Home
had presented at the previous week’s meeting.
4.
For
upcoming meetings, Journey Home will print a list of referrals. Amanda handed out a list today of clients who
we think should be trying to prepare for housing. If there is a client on this list that you
know, please try to complete a UHA if needed, or VI-SPDAT if needed. To protect this sensitive information, please
shred or return this list to Amanda after you are finished with it.
4. ANNOUNCEMENTS
GH CAN Coordinators:
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