Greater Hartford Coordinated Access Network
Greater Hartford Sub-COC / CAN Leadership Meeting
Wednesday, January 17th, 2018
In Attendance:
Brian Baker – South Park Inn
Steve Bigler – CRT
Crane Cesario – CRMHC, DMHAS
Sarah DiMaio – Salvation Army
John Ferucci – South Park Inn
John Lawlor – The Connection
Matt Morgan – Journey Home
Lionel Rigler – City of Hartford
Amy Robinson – US Dept of Veteran Affairs
Barbara Shaw – Hands On Hartford
Fred Faulkner – The Open Hearth
1.
CT BOS COC Steering Committee Items and
Discussion
a.
Policy and Procedure Updating:
i. Coordinated
Entry – CT BOS will be reviewing and adopting new policies for Coordinate Entry
to submit to HUD. Journey Home
distributed these draft policies at a previous meeting.
ii. Rapid
ReHousing – CT BOS is working to try and align the state-funded RRH and
COC-funded RRH programs. One thing we have been doing locally is trying Rapid ReHousing
with some of the folks with longer histories of homelessness, with greater
service needs. Some PSH advocates are
worried about trying Rapid ReHousing.
There are concerns that this lead to folks thinking we don’t need
additional PSH.
iii. There’s
a subcommittee that’s been working on drafting a statewide process and protocol
on how to move towards dynamic prioritization.
Part of the debate is around what are the characteristics that would be
involved in making decisions around prioritization. Should we have number of inpatient
visits? What are other characteristics
that we use? Then, ideally, once we have
agreed upon factors, we would rank them and create categories. Everyone would be assessed to those
categories, and it would move us towards a more automatic housing matching
process.
iv. One
thing we have been doing locally is trying Rapid ReHousing with some of the
folks with longer histories of homelessness, with greater service needs. Some PSH advocates are worried about trying
Rapid ReHousing. There are concerns that
this lead to folks thinking we don’t need additional PSH.
v. Shared
Housing – The Connection has done 15 shared housing arrangements, but they
don’t have separate leases. Two per unit
seems to work best.
2.
CT HMIS Steering Committee
a.
Reminders:
i. Include
all information on Helpdesk requests including: Grant numbers, example ID,
etc.
ii. We
need to tell Nutmeg when there is a merger or new projects to be entered into
CT HMIS. CT BOS Staff Myles to Forward
GIW to CCEH/Nutmeg when it is completed in the spring as this should reflect
all COC grant mergers.
3.
PIT Planning Process
a.
Tuesday January 23rd, 2018
b.
Hartford/Greater Hartford count is Wednesday
1/24 morning from 5-7 am.
i. We
need volunteers!
c.
Volunteer training Thursday 1/18 from 507PM at
CRT’s Lumsden Center with food!
d.
Program staff should have attended PIT training or
watched Webinar
4.
Hartford Planning Grant
a.
Position status and function planning – there is
not ongoing funding that has been made available for this position to continue
in its current capacity. Crane has been working
with CRT and CT BOS to determine how the core functions provided by this position
will continue moving forward.
5.
GH CAN : Grievance and Appeals Policy: Draft from
CT BOS
a.
Coordinated Entry Policy
i. Grievance
and Appeal Policies
All households shall have the right to
appeal eligibility determinations and individual program acceptance decisions.
Appeals of program acceptance decisions should be first made to the receiving
agency using their grievance process. The entity receiving the appeal must
respond in writing to all appeals within 14 days.
All appeals of eligibility decisions made
by a CAN and appeals of receiving program acceptance decisions that could not
be resolved to the satisfaction of the applicant through the receiving agency’s
grievance process shall be managed in accordance with the CT Department of
Mental Health and Addiction Services Appeals Process. That process entails
these steps:
1) Informal conference with the Appeals
Committee (a segment of local CAN Leadership).
Amy Robinson, Matt Morgan, and Barbara Shaw offered to be a part of this
effort.
2) Hearing with the DMHAS Appeal Panel
It
was unclear how this would proceed for non-DMHAS funded programs.
3) Final review with the Director of
Housing and Homeless Services. Each step is available to the applicant if the
previous step did not result in satisfactory resolution.
It
was not clear who the Director of Housing and Homeless services is. Journey Home will follow up. The committee agreed that it would be helpful
to have someone from DMHAS and someone from DOH at the same level as this
person.
DMHAS funded programs must comply with
their appeals process.
6.
Trends in Chronic Homelessness
a.
Journey Home distributed materials outlining the
total reduction in chronic homelessness throughout Greater Hartford and over
the last few years our community has seen a 75% reduction in chronic
homelessness.
7.
Subcommittee Updates
a.
Family Subcommittee
i. Utility
arrears continue to be an issue.
Eversource is requiring a deposit to turn on utilities. The deposit amount is based on the previous
tenants usage. This is a barrier for CHR
because they’ll run out of funding quickly if they’re providing arrear
assistance as well as deposit assistance.
b.
Youth Engagement Team Initiative
i. Attendance
continues to be widely varied meeting to meeting.
8.
Emergency Shelter Learning Collaborative
a.
Next month’s 2/7 meeting will be cancelled
because it conflicts with the introductory meeting for the Emergency Shelter
Learning Collaborative
9.
Dynamic Prioritization Update
a.
A statewide committee is working on this.
b.
10.
GH CAN Shelter and Housing Data
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