VI-SPDAT Meeting 7/12/16

VI-SPDAT Meeting

Meeting Notes

Tuesday, 7/12/2016

In Attendance:

Steve Hurley – Journey Home

Mollie Greenwood – Journey Home

Rubi Alegria – Mercy Housing and Shelter Corp

Yolanda Potter – Mercy Housing and Shelter Corp

Kara Capobianco – Department of Housing

Heather Pilarcik – South Park Inn

Luz Serrano – ImmaCare

Shanika Wallace – CRT SSVF

Tina Gaines – CHR PATH

Je’Naya King – CHR PATH

1.       Welcome and Introductions

a.       Agency Leadership has asked that we hold a meeting to discuss the process for completing a VI-SPDAT with clients, and to set a uniform policy for when the VI-SPDAT should be administered.

b.      Yolanda Potter of Mercy initially stated that it makes most sense to her to do VI-SPDATs at a CAN assessment.

c.       Luz Serrano of ImmaCare echoed this.  If VI-SPDATs aren’t getting completed at CAN appointments, it gets harder to know when they should be getting done, and can lead to inconsistency.

d.      Kara of DOH stated that the reason Department of Housing isn’t encouraging doing all VI-SPDATs at CAN appointments is because 80% of folks who attend CAN appointments never enter into the shelter system, so it would be wasting client and staff time, when ultimately many folks aren’t ever becoming literally homeless.

                                                               i.      Kara added that each month we add nearly 1,000 people to the Greater Hartford By-Name List in HMIS.

e.      Rubi of Mercy indicated that it makes sense to her to do a VI-SPDAT at a CAN assessment if clients are literally homeless at the time of the appointment. 

                                                               i.      Luz echoed that she currently only does VI-SPDATs for people who are literally homeless when they come to a CAN assessment. 

f.        Heather of South Park Inn expressed that whatever policy we do decide on, it’s important that we all agree to commit to it, because continually modifying policies around the VI-SPDAT has already led to a lot of staff re-training, and a lot of confusion in the community.

g.       One suggestion was to add a column on the shelter waitlist indicating whether someone has done a VI-SPDAT, and if they did complete one, what their score was.  In that way, as shelters are taking folks in, they will already know if a VI-SPDAT was completed at the time of appointment.

h.      Kara of DOH expressed that one of the reasons that we were talking about waiting to complete a VI-SPDAT, is that having that as a first step in the case management process can make folks think that they will be guaranteed a housing resource if they complete the VI-SPDAT, which isn’t realistic.  We do not have as many housing resources as we have folks experiencing homelessness, so for folks who are able to self-resolve, having them complete a VI-SPDAT at intake, or very early into a shelter stay may discourage them from self-resolving.

                                                               i.      Heather of South Park Inn said that while it makes a lot of sense to try and give folks that space to self-resolve, it was not clear how to operationalize that realistically.  Many of the shelters have a high volume of folks coming through, and juggling when to administer a VI-SPDAT assessment on top of other responsibilities was going to be another burden that may not be realistic. 

i.         We also discussed that when the VI-SPDAT was originally introduced, one of the benefits was that it would help remove subjectivity in how to work with clients, by clearly assigning a path to pursue in terms of housing.

                                                               i.      Kara of DOH indicated that a huge problem we come up against by administering the VI-SPDAT at shelter intake, or before shelter entry, is that we have really artificially low scores.  On average Greater Hartford VI-SPDAT scores are about 3 points lower than other parts of the state.

                                                             ii.      We talked about how administering a VI-SPDAT with staff who had a preexisting relationship, or who had been able to build rapport, would ultimately lead us to more realistic, reliable scores. 

1.       The PATH team indicated that when doing VI-SPDATs in the field, they never lead with the VI-SPDAT assessment, but instead use it as a much later part of navigation, once  relationship has been established.

                                                            iii.      While the group agreed that there was definitely a problem with the timing of the VI-SPDAT assessment if it was leading to such artificially low scores, we were not able to determine a solution that would clearly resolve this without adding undue burden to case managers whose case loads are already overwhelming. 

                                                           iv.      We determined that we would present this discussion to the Leadership Committee and ask for guidance on what next steps make sense.

                                                             v.      One success in Greater Hartford is that we have one of the highest diversion rates in the state, so hopefully with the introduction of Mercy’s new drop in center, we will be even better able to divert households away from shelters, and utilize shelters for only folks who have no other place to go.  If we could ensure that folks who are entering shelters are truly there because there are no other options, that may resolve some of the challenge we’re facing in planning the timing of administering the VI-SPDAT.