Greater
Hartford Coordinated Access Network
Meeting
Notes
10/15/14
Sandy Barry – Salvation Army
Crane Cesario – DMHAS
Roger Clark – Immaculate Conception
Fred Faulkner – The Open Hearth
Bryan Flint – Cornerstone
Rosemary Flowers – My Sisters’ Place
Mollie Greenwood – Journey Home
Andrea Hakian – CHR
Mark Jenkins – Blue Hills Civic Association
Steve McHattie – Immaculate Conception
Phil McNally – MACC
Matt Morgan – Journey Home
Lynn Naughton – Salvation Army
Roxan Noble – Chrysalis Center
Rebekah Ohlsen – Columbus House
Heather Pilarcik – South Park Inn
Lisa Portal – Columbus House
Sara Salomons – CRT
Sandra Terry – CRT
Tamara Womack – My Sisters’ Place
1. Introductions & GH-CAN Meeting Notes
for last week, 10/8/2014 (attached and emailed)
a.
Because of the holiday weekend, meeting notes
were not emailed out until 10/15, as a result, they were attached to the
agenda. Additionally, the first section
of the GH-CAN Policies and Procedures was attached to this week’s agenda. Please review it and be ready to discuss at
next week’s meeting.
2. Updates:
a. CAN Implementation Schedule: GH-CAN
Tentative Start Date 11/17/14.
b.
Shelter
Bed Availability Report: Please note that this is an Internal CAN Document Only, and should only be distributed to CAN
agency staff.
i.
Journey Home has continued to track all use of
the Google Doc and record which shelters are regularly entering data, as well
as gathering information from each shelter about when to expect daily or weekly
updates.
ii.
Journey Home also encouraged shelters to start
having night staff update the Google document, if feasible. A few shelters have started to update the
shelter at night, providing information that is closer to real-time bed
availability.
3.
VI-SPDAT
and CAN Assessments: When a person moves between shelters or is returning
to shelter within 6 months, what is the process? Is there a certain length of time where they
would need to go through the assessment process again upon returning to
shelters?
a.
We discussed what happens if a person is moving
between shelters- do they need reassessment?
We discussed whether shelter length of stays impact churning. Some shelters indicated that they had
extension policies already in place for clients who are on a list for a housing
option, but will not be served with housing during their shelter length of
stay. There is no universal policy on
length of stay across shelters.
b.
We would like to know if someone contacts 211
after leaving shelter (for example, to couch-surf, or stay outside), do they
need to be reassessed? If they’ve been
out of shelters for 1 month do they get reassessed upon reentry? What about if they’ve been out for 8 months?
i.
Right now, we think they might need to be
reassessed every 6 months. The SPDAT is
supposed to be re-assessed every 6 months, but we don’t yet have information
for how frequently someone should be VI-SPDATed.
4. Outreach Teams- Coverage and best contact
methods
a.
We know there are multiple outreach teams, as
well as PATH providers.
b.
We want to be able to provide DSCs with contact
information for outreach workers, in case someone either refuses to enter
shelter, or is unable to enter shelter after their assessment.
c.
Phil McNally at MACC, along with a staff person
from CHR, and one volunteer make up the outreach team at MACC. They are out doing outreach every Tuesday
from 10-3 or as needed. They serve
Manchester, parts of Vernon, and East Hartford.
d.
Dave DuVerger is the outreach person at South
Park Inn. He does outreach on Thursday
mornings, from 6-11. He works throughout
the city of Hartford.
e.
Tony Mack is the outreach person at Immaculate
Conception. He is out every day, Monday
through Friday, and works in Hartford and East Hartford.
f.
In cases where a client seems to have severe mental
health needs, DSCs could contact the Homeless Outreach and Positive Engagement
team (HOPE team) at Capitol Region Mental Health.
g.
For our CAN, Trish Pollicina at CRT is the PATH
provider, Sarah Melquist is listed as a PATH provider at MACC.
5. GH-CAN Policies and Procedures – Draft of
first section attached to agenda.
a.
The first section of the Policies and Procedures
manual for the GH-CAN was attached to this week’s agenda. This section discussed entry into shelter
through the GH-CAN. Everyone should
review this section of the draft.
b.
The Housing Referral Group section is very
complex, so we will have to work through that section of the policies and
procedures in the future.
6. CAN Process Questions:
a.
Transportation-
what is available? We need to identify
existing resources for our CAN description.
It would also be good to prioritize resources we would like to have
available.
i.
The shelters all indicated what kinds of
resources are available to their shelter- the majority of shelters have bus
passes or bus tokens.
1.
Ideally, the GH-CAN would like to have a van
and driver as suggested by Immaculate Conception strategic planning, and
possibly funding for a contract with a cab service for families.
b. Remaining tasks needed in preparation for
our start date next month.
i.
Crane handed around a packet called “Making PIT
Counts Work For Your Community” and we all looked at pages 19-21 of the packet,
“Registry Week Preparation Checklist”.
This section of the packet was designed to help us start thinking about
what new issues we might need to consider as we head towards our CAN “go live”
date. You can view that packet at the
link below:
7. Marketing Plan:
a.
Posters are now available in English and
Spanish. Other languages needed-
suggestions include Vietnamese and Nepali.
We’ve been offered assistance and need to decide. Thank you Iris and José for translating the poster into Spanish last week!
i.
One marketing concern we need to keep in mind is
media engagement- if anyone at the CAN has any media connections, we want to
think about reaching out. We might need
to get in touch with people at the City of Hartford.
ii.
In New Haven, United Way did a lot of
communication about the upcoming CAN changes- Bryan Flint volunteered to reach
out to United Way.
iii.
Sandy Barry and Lynn Naughton volunteered to
reach out to Dr. Raul Pino, Director of City Health
and Human Services for Hartford.
iv.
As soon as the
training dates are announced for Nutmeg’s HMIS training prior to GH-CAN going
live, everyone should start really marketing CAN. Everyone should start communicating with their
staff about upcoming changes.
v.
Mollie reminded people to continue filling out
the CAN Contact form. This form is
trying to capture information about all the different agencies that refer to
homeless service providers on a regular basis.
vi.
Journey Home is working on making a bulleted
list with the “who, what, when, where, how” information about CAN changes for
all agencies to use when communicating with outside parties.
vii.
We also talked about potentially running a
couple of case studies through the Core Review Group and Housing Referral Group
to try and work out some of the potential obstacles before we go live.
viii.
Last week we talked about translating our
marketing posters into different languages.
1.
A CAN
contact in New Haven offered to help pay for translation services.
2.
Sara Salomons said she would reach out to
Catholic Charities’ refugee resettlement program to see if they would be able
to help us with translation.
3.
Columbus House also offered up a little of their
budget for translation services to help out.
4.
We need to get the word out on translation
needs- these materials should be translated statewide, and made available to
CANs statewide. We will communicate with
CCEH about this.
8. Announcements:
a.
Horace Bushnell apartments are leasing on Vine
and Albany St. There are 23 subsidized
units for households 62 or older, and 23 of those are set aside for those coming
from homelessness. Lisa Portal will be
the residence service coordinator and case manager, and will provide services
to the whole building. She has been in
Hartford for a long time, and the GH-CAN is excited to welcome her!
b.
Journey Home will be emailing out a Housing
Program Profile after the meeting today.
The profile is meant to gather information that households might want to
know, in case they are offered housing by a particular program down the
line. We are asking that every agency
that participates in CAN complete the profile for every housing program they
offer. The profile should take less than
ten minutes to complete per housing program.
c.
There’s an RFP out about Emergency Solutions
Grant- it asks for evidence about attendance at Coordinated Access
meetings. The RFP is due in December,
but all parties who need evidence of attendance at meetings should email mollie.greenwood@journeyhomect.org
as soon as possible so that Journey Home can start organizing that information
for distribution.
d.
Bryan Flint presented a case of a household with
a mother and her adult son- Lynn at Salvation Army indicated that she was in
touch with the family and trying to provide them with leads.
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