GH CAN Leadership Meeting Notes 3/23/2016

Greater Hartford CAN

Leadership Committee Meeting Notes

In Attendance: Brian Baker- South Park Inn, Suzan Bibisi- Tabor House, Sonia Brown - CRT, Kara Capobianco - Department of Housing, Crane Cesario- DMHAS, Brenda Earle- Department of Housing, Louis Gilbert -ImmaCare, Mollie Greenwood-Journey Home, Andrea Hakian-Community Health Center, Steve Hurley- Journey Home, Dave Martineau- Mercy Housing, Theresa Nicholson- Chrysalis Center, Marilyn Rossetti- The Open Hearth, Iris Ruiz -Interval House, Kathy Shaw- My Sister's Place, Barbara Shaw - Hands on Hartford, Mike Fournier-  YWCA, Rosemary Flowers- My Sister's Place, Cordelia Brady- Open Hearth.

1.      Welcome and Introductions

2.      Coordinated Entry Next Steps-Kara Capobianco

a.       Assessment Block Schedule

·         Kara Capobianco expressed that a major goal of what we are trying to do in reorganizing our entry process is to break the stigma that CAN appointments guarantee access for shelter.  The Department of Housing has been reaching out to providers in the community who have space to try and determine a way for assessment staff to meet with people outside of shelters for their appointments.  Locations currently being considered include Salvation Army’s Washington Street address, Center Church’s Warburton Room, My Sisters’ Place’s Pliny Street location, Hands On Hartford, and Mercy’s Friendship Center.

·         Theresa said that YWCA can be mobile, and can host appointments outside of the shelter.

·         Lou indicated that assessment staff at ImmaCare could not work off-site, but they currently don’t hold CAN assessments in shelter, they take place in the Casa De Francisco Supportive Housing building.

·         CHR’s staff are able to complete assessments at community locations.

·         Open Hearth and McKinney were not sure if staff would be able to complete assessments away from the shelters.

·         We discussed possibly having staff who were unable to leave the shelter being responsible for data entry from CAN appointments, so that some staff could complete the appointment and do any data collection on paper, and staff who are unable to leave their shelter sites could still be involved in this process. 

·         Center Church expressed that they had technology available (laptops, wifi) and could assist with creating a pop-up assessment location if capacity ever required that.

b.      Assessment Locations and Staffing

-          This is the proposed schedule for the assessment locations and staffing and there will be another meeting next week at 1:30 at Pliny Street to confirm this schedule.

-          For the time being, we are not changing the assessment schedule for single men, but we do need additional capacity on Friday.  We discussed having South Park Inn switch from hosting family appointments to hosting appointments for individuals. 

-          Below is the schedule we determined for family and individual women’s assessments moving forward.

	AM Staff	PM Staff	Location
Monday	My Sisters' Place	Center Church	Possibly Pliny St Possibly Center Church
Tuesday	SAMH	CHR	Salvation Army, Washington St
Wednesday	YWCA	SAMH	Center Church
Thursday	SAMH	CHR	Salvation Army, Washington St
Friday	Mercy		Hands On Hartford

-          There is a proposed vote to determine if navigators could also do CAN assessments- a formal vote was not taken at this time.

o   The group informally agreed that if additional capacity could not be found within the existing staff doing assessments, it would be possible to explore making changes to the navigators’ roles.

-          We also discussed potentially reallocating some of the funding from the triage contracts to be used towards staffing for CAN assessments.  

o   ImmaCare does not have enough funding left from the triage budget to allocate staff time.

o   Kara and Matt will meet with Tomiko Grant of Marshall House to discuss whether reallocating triage funding would be an option for Salvation Army Marshall House.

c.       Assessment Backlog and Blitz

-          It is proposed that 4 or 5 staff members between Chrysalis Center, Immacare, Journey Home, and the Department of Housing can make phone calls to the clients that are on the back log for upcoming assessments to let them know about the 1-2 days that we are holding a blitz.

o   There is a proposal that a script should be made for callers to use to confirm everyone is telling each client the same information.

d.      Diversion and Assessment Training

-          Prior to implementing any changes to the schedule, Kara of the Department of Housing requested that we hold a diversion training for all staff who were unable to attend the original diversion training.

e.       Be Homeful Diversion Funding: MOU with CCEH

-          Mollie announced there is $10,000 available for family diversion in the Greater Hartford area, in order to access these funds assessment agencies would need to sign an MOU with CCEH.

3.      Zero: 2016

a.       Communications Liaison- Matt Morgan

a.       We did not discuss this agenda item at this meeting.

b.      Housing Placement Report- Tenesha Grant

a.       Mollie sent around the Housing Placement Report that Tenesha Grant (Zero:2016 Housing Captain) is responsible for sharing with partners around the state each month.

b.      Mollie shared that Tenesha has requested that agencies report to Tenesha by the 10^th of each month to ensure that the data that she was sharing for Zero:2016 on behalf of our region was accurate.  Last month we did not receive accurate information regarding all housing placements. 

c.       Crane expressed concern that having information come from such a variety of locations and staff may lead to even more concerns with the quality of information being collected.

c.       C. By Name Lists in HMIS- Mollie Greenwood

a.       We did not discuss this agenda item at this meeting.

4.      Timeframes for Re-Offering Housing-Mollie Greenwood

-          Need a strategy for the five people who are on the high priority list for housing, but are refusing housing

-          After 3 months it is time to move on from that individual who is refusing housing.

-          There was general consensus that it is important to be regularly offering housing opportunities to these highest scoring, hard to engage individuals.  Mollie will report this back to the Coordinated Exit Committee.

5.      Announcements

-          There were no announcements.