Greater Hartford - Coordinated
Access Network
Meeting Notes
July 30, 2014
In Attendance:
Sandy Barry- Salvation Army
Ashley Blanchard- CRMHC
- DHMAS
Crane Cesario- CRMHC -
DHMAS
Justine Couvares- Chrysalis Center
Fred Faulkner- The Open Hearth
Bryan Flint- Cornerstone
Rosemary Flowers- My Sister’s Place
Chris Fortier – The Open Hearth
Lou Gilbert- Immaculate ICSHC
Mary Gillette- Mercy Housing
Tenesha Grant- Mercy Housing
Mollie Greenwood- Journey Home
Andrea Hakian- CHR
Tina Inferrera – South Park Inn
Mark Jenkins – Blue Hills Civic Association
Sarah Melquist- MACC
Lynn Naughton- Salvation Army
Roxan Noble- Chrysalis Center
Iris Ruiz- Interval House
Sara Salomons – CRT – Hartford CoC
Barbara Shaw- Hands on Hartford
Dave Shumway- Immaculate ICSHC
José Vega- McKinney Shelter - CRT
Josephine Wilson- Salvation Army
Updates:
·
Statewide CAN Meeting – more detailed update
next week. Initial perspective is that the GH CAN is doing really well in our
planning process. The DOH is impressed
by what we have done so far. Hopefully
by next we will have received other areas’ information that will be shared.
·
There is potentially going to be a Rapid
Rehousing – HMIS training coming up on August 8th & 9th, but we are
waiting on details.
·
Section 8 / Housing Choice Vouchers will be
opening up next month, see attached page.
·
The HUD Grant Inventory Worksheet process was
completed last week. The grant inventory
worksheet is the start of the HUD CoC Grant Funding renewal application
process.
·
A while ago, we had discussed creating a
description to explain what the CAN is, what we are doing, and make sure that
information got distributed to the different organizations throughout our
region, so people got a sense of what we were doing. We will check status and keep in mind as we
plan how to inform community stakeholders and affiliated groups.
Work Groups:
·
Last week we didn’t get the chance to form work
groups and instead took the time to make sure everyone was on the same
page. This week, we are going to split
into two groups.
Shelter Topics:
1.
GH
CAN Case Conference Team: Outline team composition and process for facilitating
challenging situations. Examples: client
has a low score due to inaccurate responses; client refuses options; etc.
2.
Accomodating
special populations in GH-CAN: unaccompanied youth, transgender persons,
families with teenaged sons, families with infants under 1, pregnant women,
single dads, undocumented persons.
·
1. Initially, there was confusion about what
“GH CAN Case Conference Team” refers to.
Is this a group to deal with the hardest clients throughout shelters, a
group to deal with people who were being churned through the system? In last week’s minutes, we indicated that if
a client was a no-show for two appointments, they would be referred to a
special team- was this it?
o
The group
decided that the clients we will deal with will vary- some will be the
difficult clients that many shelters are familiar with, others will be new
clients who are non-compliant.
o
For the most part, we predict that most of our
clients are already in the shelter, and many have been to multiple shelters-
these meetings will be to try and figure out what pieces are missing from the
puzzle.
o
For the purposes of not getting too confusing,
from now on this team will be referred to as the Core Review Team.
o
The Core
Review Team is currently composed of: Lynn Naughton, Jose Vega, Bryan
Flint, Mark Jenkins, David Shumway, and Fred Faulkner.
·
Next, we discussed what sort of forum these
discussions would happen in.
o
There are benefits to communicating about
clients via email, and sharing information digitally- it allows us to be more
flexible and communicate when we have free time.
o
Ultimately, it will be important to have this
group of people talking face to fac.
o
We do not know how often the meetings will take
place for sure. We hope that as we begin, it will become more obvious how often
and how long the meetings should be.
·
Would clients be involved in these meetings?
o
It can be very helpful for clients to have a
voice in the decisions that are being made about them. It can be helpful to have the client, as well
as outside persons, including staff from DCF, DHMAS, or other relevant
agencies.
o
The expectation is that these meetings are
taking place after numerous shelter staff have had meetings with the client,
and although clients may occasionally be present, these meetings are an
opportunity for the Core Review Team to speak openly about the client’s history
and brainstorm together about how to best improve the situation.
·
What does the protocol look like? The potential structure is as follows:
1. Shelter staff,
upon realizing a persistent issue / problem with a client, will fill out a
referral form and contact Journey Home.
2. Journey Home will add the client to the
meeting agenda for the next Core Review Team Meeting.
3. The Core Review
Team will meet, and determine a plan of action for the client.
4. The Core Review
Team will then tell the referring shelter what the action plan is (this
information could possibly be transmitted through Journey Home).
5. In a later
meeting, the Core Review Team will re-assess the client, and see if there have
been any changes.
o
The reality is, at this point, there might not
be a good enough solution for clients immediately after these meetings. In the immediate future, these meetings might
help us acquire some data about our most challenging clients. Right now, everyone has anecdotal
information, we can all tell stories about tough clients. But these meetings will finally allow us to
start working across different agencies and getting some data- maybe the
information we can gather can help us move forward in providing better client
resources.
·
Questions We Still Have:
o
What exactly will our referral form look like?
§
Is there one in HMIS that we could use?
o
What if a client is non-compliant with the
referral that the Core Review Team provides?
o
What happens to clients who do not sign a
release of information? Is it impossible
for the Core Review Team to discuss them?
o
The group is concerned about how far out these
meetings will be scheduled- in areas where the CAN is already running,
assessment appointments are being scheduled two weeks out. How long will it be before the Core Review
Team meets, and will it be too long of a time?
o
Where will we store this data? Does HMIS have a place for this information?
o
What happens when the Core Review Team makes a
referral, like, this person needs to talk to DCF- whose job is it to make an
appointment for that client? Does that
burden fall on the Core Review Team, or on the referring shelter?
2. Accommodating Special Populations in GH CAN
·
We need to figure out which clients needs can
already be met at shelters- which shelters aren’t problematic for transgendered
people, which shelters allow children under one year old, which shelters allow
pregnant women, which shelters allow single men with children.
·
We also need to recognize that undocumented
immigrants make up a large population in our shelters, and that their needs
must be addressed as well. It’s
important to note how much more difficult it is for many of them to find
employment or housing compared to an American citizen.
Housing Referral
1.
Transition
to a Unified Referral List- schedule next steps of existing wait list
unification, including assessment of people on existing wait lists.
2.
Housing
Referral Committee- outline team composition and process for reporting opening
in housing, reviewing unified referral list, and identifying prioritized people
for next openings.
Report out to full
group:
·
We need to purge our waitlists
·
We need to start doing VI-SPDATs
·
A lot of us have UHA and paper waitlists- we
need to get those together while maintaining the integrity of fair housing with
time and date stamps.
·
We want to be purging our lists by the middle of
September
·
We need signed releases to complete VI-SPDATs
·
We also talked about a committee that we’ll have
to pull together for biweekly meetings where we can identify where the housing
opportunities are, and talk about the people on housing waitlists, so we can
match them.
·
A big challenge is going to be merging all
existing lists into one, central, prioritized list. We are figuring out how to look at people for
eligibility in a faster way for when there are openings. Also, we need to
identify the process for integrating existing eligible people into UHA and CAN.
Housing Referral
Workflow Group, Notes:
- Everyone in Housing Work Group has waitlists
(each of varying lengths) and are ready to purge.
- Most clients on waiting lists still qualify; most
are getting on the UHA one way or another. Question remains how to
combine.
- Discussion over UHA needing to incorporate VI
(*Update- UHA determines and lists VI and score). However, there is still
a need for UHA to report on VI-SPDAT score. Difficulty in determining who
has been VI-SPDAT’ed on UHA and who has not.
- How often can/should people take the VI-SPDAT?
What about those who ‘learn the system’ and score higher on purpose?
- CAN needs multidisciplinary ROI’s for client
intakes.
- Need a catch-up process of date/time when taking
paper applications from clients into VI-SPDAT/UHA.
- In looking at existing waiting list people,
trying to figure out a process of either prioritizing those already on the
wait list then changing once GH-CAN ‘goes live’, or lumping all together.
Should take those who are chronic first as in coordination with HUD
requests.
Timeframes:
- August 15th – cutoff date for new
referrals
- September 15th – waiting list ‘purge’
should be complete and begin unification process.
- We’re still waiting to hear from Statewide CAN
when the universal VI-SPDAT training will be.
- People whose score on the VI-SPDAT is for RRH
will not need to have a UHA completed.
- How do we include with those people who are
already in shelter now into CAN process?
- Are all providers in HMIS connected to GH-CAN?
How to get them involved?
- Need for Housing Referral Committee to discuss
and assess clients objectively; why a client was denied, reasons behind,
tiers, etc. Need to figure out standards on how to review
eligibility.
|
Reconnecting as a large group-
GH-CAN Coordination Teams
Needed: GH-CAN Oversight Group (leadership), Housing Referral Team, Case
Conference Team. Need to coordinate with
Community Care Teams (Hospitals)
·
The CAN major oversight group is one that we
need to create. In Middletown/Middlesex,
they review every single person on their list at each meeting. We cannot do that, because we are a much
larger CAN. We need to figure out who
will be represented on our oversight group and what its functions will be, so
that we can streamline as much as possible. Also, we need to have performance
data collected, assessed and reviewed for outcomes and improvement plans.
Reminder: Scheduled Items both
211 Decision Points/ HMIS Information sheets are Due 8/29
Future Agenda Items:
·
How do we include people already in shelter in
Coordinated Access? Right now we’ve been
working on the process for people with a housing crisis who will call 211 to
enter shelters for the first time, but we have people in shelters already.
·
We also need to talk about the unsheltered
people and how the process will work.
·
Google Docs Protocol: Beyond shelter programs, who
should have access to view the document?
Right now, only the shelters and Journey Home can view and edit the
document. Should we make it available
for day shelters and soup kitchens to view availability (on a read-only basis),
for when they are referring people?
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