Greater Hartford CAN Pre-Implementation 9/17/14

Greater Hartford - Coordinated Access Network

 Meeting Notes

September 17, 2014

In Attendance:

Brian Baker- South Park Inn

Crane Cesario – DMHAS

Roger Clark – Immaculate Conception

Chris Daly – Charter Oak Health Center

Bryan Flint – Cornerstone

Rosemary Flowers – My Sister’s Place

Shawn Lang – AIDS CT

Tenesha Grant – Mercy Housing

Mollie Greenwood- Journey Home

Andrea Hakian – CHR

Mark Jenkins- Blue Hills Civic Association

Steve McHattie – Immaculate Conception

Sarah Melquist- MACC

Matt Morgan – Journey Home

Lynn Naughton- Salvation Army

Theresa Nicholson- Chrysalis Center

Pieter Nijssen – Tri-Town Shelter

Roxan Noble- Chrysalis Center

Heather Pilarcik- South Park Inn

Iris Ruiz- Interval House

Sara Salomons – CRT

Dave Shumway – Immaculate Conception

Rob Soderberg- CHR

Josephine Wilson- Salvation Army

Dalila May – Interval House

1.       Introductions & GH-CAN Meeting Notes for last week, 9/10/2014

a.       GH-CAN Meeting Notes were sent by email on 9/8/14 this week.

2.       Updates:

a.       CAN Implementation Schedule: GH CAN Tentative Start Date 10/27/14.  This will probably change as the HUD CoC NOFA application  is out now and due 10/30/14

b.      Shelter Bed Availability Report as of Tuesday, 9/16/14 11:59 PM.

                                                               i.      Mollie showed the group the information tracking from the Google Document since the CAN has been using them to track bed availability.  Most shelters have continued to update them regularly, and she will try to communicate further with shelters that update less frequently.

                                                             ii.      Additionally, this week there is a chart showing how many beds were available in each shelter for men, women, and families, as of the last Google update every day.  Although these numbers often change as night approaches, it might be helpful, going forward, to see what kinds of beds typically have less availability.

c.       VI-SPDAT – Diversion Tool Training & Schedule: Sign up via email to Mollie Greenwood

                                                               i.      mollie.greenwood@journeyhomect.org               Remaining date:

                                                             ii.      Tuesday, September 23^rd, from 1:00-4:00 at Sue Ann Shay Place, 76 Pliny St., Hartford

3.       LGBTQIA Presentation: Shawn Lang and Matt Morgan

a.       Shawn Lang, Director of Public Policy at AIDS CT, and Matt Morgan, Executive Director of Journey Home co-facilitated a presentation on LGBT definitions and the LGBT community in our shelters and housing programs.

                                                               i.      All meeting attendees received a copy of the PowerPoint presentation, which was also emailed out after the meeting.

                                                             ii.      Additionally, Matt provided some information about housing rights for the LGBT community.

                                                            iii.      Following the presentation, all present shelters spoke about what their experiences had been with the LGBT community.

                                                           iv.      Every  shelter present expressed an interest in receiving these resources to take back to staff.

1.       Shawn indicated that anecdotally, she had heard that trans women don’t feel welcomed by the shelter community, but that this group coming together for this discussion is a great step to be taking to help our clients further.

2.       It is important that the people delivering assessments for the CAN in the future have access to this information, and are aware of the resources available to different populations.

3.       CCEH will be sending around a survey to all of us about what it would cost to be best able to accommodate people, and about what best practices we have utilized in serving these populations.  The survey aim is to find out more about working with LGBT communities.  It also will be used to learn of what may be needed to work with families, especially teenage boys, and how not to split up families.

4.       Marketing Plan: Start telling your contacts that we switch to 211 for access to shelters  in November, and be prepared to please change voice mail messages to indicate CAN process. 

a.       As we move forward in GH-CAN marketing, it will be important to keep thinking about LGBT issues.

5.       Existing Waiting Lists- Updates

a.       All housing programs that were represented recorded their waitlist information.  Mollie will follow up with those programs that were not present.

b.      We have asked people to continue or start discussions property management companies to figure out how they can work with our priority lists.

c.       We also discussed the issue with the UHA determining non-chronic people to be chronic due to self-report and lack of documentation.

                                                               i.      We discussed shelters needing to upload homeless verification documentation, and we need to have all staff at all shelters uploading that documentation.  It’s also a training issue to make sure everyone knows definition of Chronic Homelessness.

6.       Cold Weather Protocol: We requested Shelters’  estimates of  how many people taken in, on average, per night, on a Cold Weather Protocol Night last year.

a.       All shelters that were present gave their estimates.  Mollie will follow up with those who were absent.

7.       CAN Process Questions-

a.       Because we had such a packed meeting with presentations, we did not get to our process questions this week- next week we will need to talk about documentation and UHA timeframes as noted in the agenda.

8.       Announcements:

a.       Consumer Representative nominations for CT-BOS are needed.  If you know of any interested consumers, please contact Crane to get the form to send in.

b.      The Greater Hartford Shelter Plus Care meeting for Friday 9/26/14 is cancelled.