GH CAN Leadership 4/5/17

Greater Hartford Coordinated Access Network

Leadership Agenda

Wednesday, April 5^th, 2017

1.      Welcome and Introductions – note the address section on sign-in!

a.      Brian Baker – South Park Inn

b.      Sonia Brown - CRT

c.      Kyren McCorey – The Open Hearth

d.      John Ferrucci – South Park Inn

e.      Rosemary Flowers – My Sisters’ Place

f.       Louis Gilbert - ImmaCare

g.      Mollie Greenwood – Journey Home

h.      Matt Morgan – Journey Home

i.       Lisa Quach – Journey Home

j.       Kathy Shaw – My Sisters’ Place

k.      Barbara Shaw – Hands On Hartford

l.       Cathy Zeiner - YWCA

m.    Collette Slover – Charter Oak Health Center

n.      John Lawlor – The Connection

o.      Malika Nelson - CHR

p.      Jennifer Greer - CHR

2.      Advocacy Days – Matt Morgan

                                                    i.     Advocacy day is one week away, so we discussed the List of speakers who have all said yes & willing to speak on behalf of the GH CAN.

                                                   ii.      Lisa Tepper Bates & Matt will give overview of reaching home campaign, outlining the need to preserve DMHAS line items for homeless services. We will also be focusing on preserving DOH Homeless Youth line item – which was under DCF previously, and which moved this year to DOH at 2.3 mil. Other line items we are hoping to preserve include capital improvements for RRH & supportive housing. Any providers with questions about these line items should reach out to CCEH or Partnership for Strong Communities.

                                                  iii.     Matt asked whether there was Anything else that you want to make sure is advocated for that is not on this campaign that is important to our region.

1.      Barbara Shaw would like to add AIDS housing to our list of resources that we are discussing. AIDS housing is a separate line item from homeless services, and right now we have already seen a proposal for Over a half million dollar cut to a small pool. Still $325,000 cut. DOH already made a cut to that in July.  HIV/AIDS programs have already lost supportive housing for folks with HIV. Not CH but at risk. Worried about losing more housing. Asking for full restoration of $526,000. Barbara will put together a slide for PowerPoint presentation. Will ask Shawn Lang if she has one already? Barbara will be at advocacy day and willing to speak if there is time.

2.      Matt reminded everyone that legislators come in and go, and are not always just sitting down to listen to entire presentation. Matt asked if there was anyone else prepared to speak if time allows or in case legislators want more feedback?

a.      Jen Greer will be there and will speak for CHR. CHR is in the process of trying to recruit a client.

b.      Sarah DiMaio is also trying to recruit a client. Anyone else willing to try to get a client to share their story. Prep them. Suggest client to write their story down in case they can’t speak. John Lawlor also signed up. Looking for youth. Should have one by end of week. Other thing we want to do is to get the legislators there. Matt will send out form letters that you can send but calling is more important, we really want to make sure we get all the legislators there. 

3.      Housing Data Updates – see p. 3

a.      We have housed 33 chronic verified households in the month of March. 26 of those were in the last 2 weeks. So far in 2017 we have housed 57 clients. We had a big surge of housing resources became available at the end of December so now clients are housed. 63 folks verified and currently matched to a housing program.

b.      We have housed 370 clients since March 2015.

c.      11 households who are verified chronic who are not matched to any housing resource. # has been increasing because we don’t have a whole ton of openings in the individuals matching meeting that happens every 2 weeks. Right now we are looking for folks in PSH range – verified chronic with higher scores to match them first. Folks who have lower score are matched to RRH. Some of the clients on the list are verified but have very low scores because they’re not being matched because their scores are too low.

d.      We had a training yesterday for SPDAT training and – now have 3 trainers in the GH CAN – Lisa, Trish & Mollie who can go out and complete trainings in the area. As a community, we need to evaluate those clients with low scores. Right now we have 65 clients we believe to be chronic but don’t have both forms yet. Highest was about 85. # of potentially chronic clients has been staying around 65 and not going much lower.

4.      Subcommittee Reports: Assistance Needed from Leadership

a.      Diversion Team (p.4) – Steve Hurley

1.      A concern raised by the Diversion team is that there is no welcome center to direct people to after CAN appointments. Without that resource the team is focusing on how to change shelter waitlist, making sure diversion team is working with community. Another big thing is outreach referral process.  The challenge is we have a lot of outreach capacity, but the services available vary from provider to provider.  The diversion team is trying to figure out how to connect unsheltered clients with some outreach team without calling all 5 outreach workers. Outreach committee is working to trying to handle this.

2.      One ask the Diversion Team has is to have leadership come visit the diversion center to see what the day-to-day is. The person to get in touch with if you want to drop in is Yolanda Potter. Appointments typically happen in the morning - 9am-1pm. At 1:30, everyone in the diversion center comes together to case conference to discuss all the cases they’ve had and do some problem solving. They decide how to use funds and who can access financial resources. The afternoon is when they do follow-ups – updating waitlist information, HMIS close out.

b.      Rapid ReHousing (p.5) – Lisa Quach

1.      Furniture is the challenge the group was most concerned about. There are some clients who have already received their keys, but are remaining in shelter because they do not have any furniture in their homes.

a.      Sonia Brown was able to access resources at CRT in the past. Fresh Start had closed down so they had mattresses but they still had some issues with transportation of furniture.

2.      Even if we get community donations to Bob’s Warehouse, we still need transportation to transport the furniture, which is another barrier. Real Estate Agents recycle in West Hartford – one idea is to take furniture from households who are moving, and potentially have transportation piece to give folks job opportunities.

3.      Sonia will see what she can do with getting a UHAUL and see if client is able to move stuff from the truck to unit. Need storage to hold stuff if people want to donate. Has anyone reached out to 2 men and a truck? Barbara will touch base with them.

c.      Coordinated Exit: Individuals (p.6) – Tenesha Grant

                                                    i.      What to do after a person has been referred to a program and there isn’t an immediate housing opening for this individual was a concern for this group  We have had some agencies who have begun requesting more applicants and almost generating an internal waitlist, so that when one household is refused by property management, they can move to another person already waiting.  This is a concern because in the past it hasn’t always been clear that programs were requesting “backup” referrals.  We also ran into an issue where Tentative referrals now don’t have housing available, because there were multiple referrals made for one opening, and there wasn’t clear communication..

                                                   ii.     A suggestion from Crane is that if you have already filled all of your vacancies, if folks were tentative referrals but there is nothing available, they need to be returned to the list and prioritized. In the past there have been some issues Issues with clients paying rent to landlords directly. Leadership need to let staff know they need to be in attendance so that they can happen. Last individual meeting of the month will be the case conference with PSH case managers. Times where we don’t get updates and we have outreach/navigator staff wondering what is going on with client. Challenge to have them at all the meetings.

d.      Coordinated Exit: Families (p.7) – Lisa Quach

                                                    i.     One of the biggest barriers in family matching is that we have very few PSH openings for families that need more than a 2 bedroom unit. We need to see if any programs have flexibility to adjust bedroom sizes. Families in RRH who should be bridged to PSH but we don’t have anything that can accommodate some larger households. Tenesha asked if it’s the bedroom size or money allotted to the bedroom size. Gap in programming that exists right now. Crane’s goes by certs that she can combine, CRT is about dollars and what it can hold. Some program contracts explain that they are required to serve a certain number of families, and because of this they cannot be flexible on bedroom size.  Would HUD be willing to amend # of clients served? Sonia offered to look into this.

e.      Youth Engagement Team Initiative (YETI) (p.9) – John Lawlor

1.      1^st YETI meeting – 18 people. No request of CAN leadership at this point.

f.       Coordinated Outreach (p.11) – Janet Bermudez – put together a chart of all outreach providers in the areas. Collecting what services each outreach worker actually does. Folks don’t know who to call – especially diversion team. Everyone’s services provided are different. Originally, this committee had made outreach cards, but when we recently tried to go back and remake those cards, we found that we don’t have a consistent referral process.  

g.      Malika from CHR PATH spoke about the fact that the PATH team is currently doing homeless verifications for the CAN, even for folks who aren’t currently on PATH’s caseload. The referral process for this was smooth in the beginning, but more recently when referrals are sent to the PATH teamminimum information is provided so the staff is doing extra work to fill out the information on the form needed to locate people. She requested that all staff planning to refer to PATH please fill out the form completely to save time.  Another challenge the PATH team has faced is that they have been doing many homeless verification forms, but  many of the households they are verifying are not even connected to housing so what was the point of verifying homelessness? The PATH Team covers the entire geographic area of the GH CAN.

5.      Charter Oak Health Center: Clinical Hours in Shelters – Collette Slover

a.      Charter Oak Health Center is excited to announce they are now operating clinics in 6 shelters. In addition to this, they also have a mobile van – hours of primary location as well as urgent care at 21 Grand St. All staffed by APRN. Charter Oak is hoping to get dental and behavioral health in the community. Right now, the focus is on Figuring out where there’s gap in services and how they can provide services.

b.      Is the time dedicated at the shelters only for referrals for clients staying at the shelter? Yes, at this point the shelter clinic hours are reserved specifically for shelter residents, and is not open to the public.  Diversion and Mercy is a primary location for all clients as that is the centralized entry-point to the system. Mobile Van is for everyone. Behavioral health services at Mercy is in the works. Collette is working on it. Limited at SPI now. Green is okay to refer – Yellow is not okay to refer. House of Bread is open. Collette will revise schedule to have one to give to clients.

6.      Announcements

a.      There are now 3 full SPDAT trainers in the GH CAN.  If someone at your organization needs training in the full SPDAT, please email mollie.greenwood@journeyhomect.org