Greater Hartford Coordinated
Access Network
Meeting Notes
July 9, 2014
In Attendance:
Sandy
Barry- Salvation Army
Crane
Cesario – DMHAS/Hartford CoC
Roger
Clark- Immaculate Conception Shelter and Housing Corp.
Bryan
Dixon- Intercommunity
Fred
Faulkner- The Open Hearth
Lou
Gilbert- Immaculate Conception Shelter and Housing Corp.
Andrea
Hakian- CHR
Dave
Martineau- Mercy Housing
Sarah
Melquist- MACC Charities
Matt
Morgan- Journey Home
Amina
Musa- Journey Home
Lynn
Naughton- Salvation Army Marshall House
Pieter
Njissen- Tri-Town Shelter
Roxan
Noble- Chrysalis Center/ YWCA
Barbara
Shaw- Hands on Hartford
Dave
Shumway- Immaculate Conception Shelter and Housing Corp.
Josephine
Wilson- Salvation Army Marshall House
Jose
Vega- McKinney/ CRT
Tamera
Womack- My Sisters’ Place
·
Discussed
statewide implementation:
o At the last
statewide meeting we agreed that there is a need for a statewide implementation
process.
o Shelter intake
form DOH just approved, includes Hearth Act regs
o There has been 8
diff regions created for Coordinated Access but why can’t everything be
centralized?
·
Recommended
for someone to keep a list of topics we need to address later, what are
questions for statewide
o Sarah Melquist
will handle statewide questions
o What is CCEH’s
role?
§ Technical
advising
·
In
order to maximize meeting time, maybe we should make a list of things that we
don’t need to be unique about. For example, release of information and
grievance procedure** are processes that are centralized. Will be written on
the statewide questions
o Who are the
grievance policies going to?
o If you get
denied acceptance to a program you will grieve to that program. However if a
person is denied to multiple who will they grieve to? The CAN? These are
questions that need to be figured out on a statewide basis but we will still
need to customize this for our CAN. We need to figure out the limitations of
our local CAN
·
Can
organize meetings by different topics that each person is interesting in
exploring. We could take time out of meeting time to split up. Have meeting
groups one week with the big group and another week with the small group.
·
We
could also use the first part of meeting to break up into groups then the
second half we report our discussion to the larger group. à Agreed?
First Main Topic
of conversation
What is the process
of referring a household to shelter in 24 hours or longer?
·
If
someone comes in for a Coordinated Access assessment today at intake we will
have to utilize energy to divert them. How are we going to place that client
into shelter if they need shelter tomorrow?
·
We
can’t tell them there will be a bed available tomorrow if the shelter is
currently full
·
If
someone says I need somewhere to sleep in 2 or 3 days . We have a bed available
for tonight but we cannot guarantee that you will have a bed tomorrow
·
If
we decide to have a certain amount of beds at a shelter reserved for CAN
referrals we can do that as a community. For example, 10% of our beds can be
reserved.
·
Need
to add that while the person needs a bed and we have a tentative reservation for
them what will happen if the person is on the banned list at the shelter they
were referred to.
·
SAMH
will tell a client to call back at 6:30 pm and they will ensure them shelter
that night. If all shelters are full they can end up in the hotel. HPRP works to put the client in a shelter once
they are put into the system.
·
Need
to be mindful of mind who we’re serving and if we are able to effectively serve
those that are the most vulnerable. (remembering appointment dates, etc for a
person w
·
Sarah-Who
owns the client? If you came into my shelter for the assessment do you come
back to me when you don’t like where you referral site is?
o Could be
happening simultaneously
·
Clients
will call Salvation Army Marshall House (SAMH) saying they need to stay at SAMH
because their families will be able to stay together. However, If SAMH is full
and they get referred to another shelter many times clients won’t show up to
the other shelter. We need to think about what to do with clients in situations
like this.
·
We
can’t own people after CAN assessment. Case managers already have clients that
they are responsible for and contractual obligations. Having the CAN
assessments at a centralized location will make it easier for clients to
comprehend that the person doing the assessment is not their case manager.
·
Do
the shelters have a time when the bed will not be held anymore?
o Every shelter
has a different curfew on when a bed won’t be held for a client anymore. Maybe moving towards standardizing this time
would be easier for our community going ahead with this CAN.
·
What
are we going to do in the case of repeats (people who aren’t showing up for
their next appointments and continuously going through the system? They will go
back to the original staff member that did CAN in the first place. We don’t
want to have people doing multiple assessments
o Need to also get
rid of the preferred shelter mentality. Clients will have to accept going to
whichever shelter has a availability.
o Also need to
promote that the assessment is important and needs to happen. We will serve
immediate needs that night but they still need to do a CAN assessment.
·
Well
if we have a centralized assessment location clients won’t associate the person
doing their assessment as their case managers
·
The
strength of Coordinated Access is the case manager’s local knowledge. If a
person needs shelter in 3 days the case manager’s doing the assessment know
what resources are available to have them in a stable housing situation
·
If
a person has come in for an assessment and they need a bed that night we could
say there’s an empty bed at South Park Inn tonight and they can go there. But
this bed is owned by Ralph who is coming tomorrow night via CAN appointment
·
A
lot of people are coming to shelters for resources. We need to fine tune our
assessment so we are able to help people efficiently and not place them in
shelter when they don’t need to be
·
Families
will have some kind of benefits usually. If a family says I can come tomorrow,
we tell them if there is a bed available now if you want to come.
·
If
a person is in detox, the bed is not available.
o Some shelters
will let someone else stay there temporarily until the person in detox comes
back. The other client would then have
to stay on a mattress if at capacity
·
General
agreement of the meeting, if someone needs a bed tomorrow we will offer them a
bed tonight, if we have one and won’t guarantee a bed
o Each shelter
needs to figure out what an open bed means to them
·
Challenge
DOH (and or DSS) to change their policy, if a person is staying in shelter only
to access security deposit it’s a waste of resources
4)
Existing Waiting lists
(transitional
housing, permanent housing)
·
Mercy
Housing has a day list. If people call and ask if they’re still on it they will
remain on it
·
YWCA
has two separate lists for TLP and PSH
·
Between
the VI SPDAT and length of time homelessness we need to come up with a unified
housing list that prioritizes people with the greatest need
·
CHR
has close to 30+ people on their waiting list
o They
continuously purge out their list. If the people on the waiting lists are
inaccessible, they will follow up and if not take them off the list
o Immaculate has
close to 38
·
Should
Rapid Rehousing be included in the waiting list? SAMH just received funding for
Rapid Rehousing
·
Crane
offered a position for a summer MSW intern to administer the VI SPDAT for
people on waitlists which is an op
·
We
need to keep in mind there are two different kinds of transitional housing-
Transitional housing in place and transitional housing project based. What is
going to happened to transitional down the line?
o We need to
prioritize TLP for our community
·
Cross
training across agencies for the VI SPDAT – Clients will respond in a way
that’s misconstruing information. Clients will answer questions in a way that
is not accurate to their level of need so we need to be trained to understand how
to give people appropriate services
o Need a broad
training to happen in Greater Hartford in August
o Let’s link ECM
and VI SPDAT training
·
Do
we include transitional living programs on the unified list?
·
Time
frame to close existing lists?
o Aug 1st?After
this date will we not take in new people on wait lists
o Case managers
need to check in with the people on the wait lists to assess them with the VI
SPDAT
o It’s easy for
those clients who are the GH Universal Housing Application to be assessed ?
o Need to send a release
to that person (client) to see if they are on the Journey Home Universal
Housing Application
§ Would it be easy
to send a letter to clients to figure out all the different wait lists they are
on? Yes
·
Sept
15th purge by then?
o If the winter is
starting to turn cold people might start to respond at that point so we need to
keep in mind that we might have increased volume of people whgoing to do with
those that we thought we’re purged out of the system
·
Everyone
on a PSH waiting list should be on the UHA waitlists
·
Future
workgroup: PSH issue work group
Next Steps:
-Look at Households needing shelter in
24 hours or longer in one group and Individuals needing shelter in 24 hours or
longer in another
-Training in Aug for VI SPDAT
-Hopefully Crane’s summer intern will be
able to VI SPDAT people on the wait lists
-How we will manage Coordinated Access
combined wait list
-CAN Release of Info and Purge letters
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