Leadership Committee Agenda
Wednesday,
June 20th, 2018
1. Welcome
and Introductions
CT BOS COC Items
2.
New Project Applications: CAN Discussion – Sarah
DiMaio
a. We
won’t be specifically endorsing specific projects, but are able to write a CAN
letter for any programs that are interested in applying for the CT Balance of
State COC competition.
b. Has
anyone else decided to apply, or has anything changed since the last meeting?
c. CHR
is applying for new units for PSH, and this will be split between Hartford and
CCAN. They’re applying for 13 units,
which would be divided between the two CANs.
d. CRT
is applying for possibly PSH, or possibly RRH case management expansion, as
well as potentially collaborating with Journey Home around a housing locator
position.
e. ImmaCare
is not applying.
f. Letters
would go to Matt and Crane, unless Journey Home is a subcontractor. Requests for letters are due by 6/25.
3.
Reminder: Annual Assessments – Zoe Schwartz
a. Annual
assessments need to be getting done, including income assessments. It’s important that programs are continuing
to check in on clients.
4.
CAN Representation – Sarah DiMaio
a. The
sub-COCs and CANs have merged. Every
year we have to submit who our representatives are. Since our merger, we determined that Crane
and Matt would be reps, and Andrea would be a backup, and Sarah would as an
absolute last resort. This committee
approved keeping things the same.
GH
CAN Leadership Items
5.
Coordinated Access Network Funding – Matt
Morgan
a.
Journey Home proposed to maintain current
funding for CAN staffing out of the available CIA funding. This supports funding:
i. CAN
Manager
ii. CAN
Housing Facilitator
iii. CAN
Outreach Coordinator
iv. CAN
Homeless Youth and Family Liaison
v. CAN Data
Coordinator (part-time)
b.
In addition, Journey Home proposed that any
additional funding above that required to maintain this staffing level, could
be available to support funding overflow spaces in emergency shelters.
c.
The committee unanimously voted in favor of
this proposal.
6.
City of Hartford Funding – Lionel Rigler
a.
ESG funding was passed at levels proposed
b.
The council passed two things concerning the
CAN
i. 75000 for “CAN
shelter support services.”
1.
The city cobbled together 75,000 of public
service dollars. Of the allocation city
gets from HUD, 3.5 million. That funds
all the afterschool programs. We fund
35-40 agencies to do public service activities, and the City Council has made a
pool of $75,000 available from the public service allotment to assist with CAN
support.
ii. In
addition, the city has identified $71,000 of ESG funding, available for the
coming year. The city is looking to help
utilize the funds that are available through DOH in the state of CT HOME TBRA
program. We’re going to fund a housing
rapid rehousing coordinator. Lionel is working
on an RFP. We’ll probably try to move
fairly quickly.
iii. There will
be two separate RFP’s for these two funding streams. There’s competitiveness in the RFP’s. It’s very detailed recordkeeping, you’re
often collecting and sharing client demographic data directly to the city. For programs that have supported shelters,
we’re accepting CT HMIS data.
iv. The other
thing is, there’s a legal mandated assumption that anyone in a homeless shelter
is very low income. If you’re in a
homeless shelter you’re very low income.
Lionel doesn’t anticipate making it more complicated than that.
v. Lionel’s
intention is to get both RFPs out within the next few weeks.
vi. Matt asked
whether there was a timeline on the Cold Weather RFP to come out.
1.
City has asked Salvation Army to renew the
contract. Salvation Army is waiting to
identify whether they can amend the contract.
2.
This contract is with the City Department of Health
and Human Services, so it’s separate from the funding Lionel is sharing. Sarah hasn’t heard anything new from the City
yet. The city had said they would look
into a few schools as possible locations, based on some of last year’s
challenges.
a.
There’s not yet another planning meeting for
Cold Weather, and will possibly schedule another meeting depending on that
outcome.
7.
CT HMIS Data Quality – Generating Duplicate
IDs – Mollie Greenwood
a.
Overall, the number of duplicates being generated
in the GH CAN has decreased. Two years
ago, GH CAN had generated over 500 duplicates, this year over 200 were
generated. We are making progress, but
agencies still need to communicate with their data entry staff that they should
not be creating duplicate IDs. Mollie
can share information on the number of duplicates your organization has
generated.
8.
Shelter Curfew Consistency – Fred Faulkner
a.
The Emergency Shelter Learning Collaborative
has been discussing whether we should have curfews or not. The push is to eliminate curfews regionally. What Fred was hoping is to get a consensus
from this group about what we want to do around curfews.
b.
At The Open Hearth, the concern is that it may
lead to empty beds while men are outside.
If Joe has a bed and he doesn’t show up for his bed, and doesn’t tell
you that he’s running late or has a job, his bed remains open all night
long. That’s the major concern that beds
are getting utilized while folks are out, particularly in cold weather.
c.
At Marshall House, even with having a curfew,
we aren’t giving up beds that night.
We’ve always been functioning that if a bed is open for 48 hours, it
becomes a self-discharge. It sounds like
if someone doesn’t show for curfew.
d.
Rebekah said the concern is folks are pulling
from the Warming Center to fill a bed.
i. Lauren
said the issue sounds like folks are identifying how long to hold a bed
open. It feels like that’s what we need
to talk about.
e.
Letticia said that we’re having folks with
difficulty doing their housing plans.
Folks sleep through their meetings, and working towards housing plans
has been a challenge.
i. Families
don’t experience this much, because they are expecting they need to get folks in.
f.
Another issue Rebekah mentioned was staff are
used to enforcing rules. We’ve been
doing a lot of training around becoming a housing focused shelter. The guys come and they go, and we haven’t had
much of an issue.
i. Iris asked
about safety concerns.
ii. The
collaborative said that curfew is more of a label. Some of this is a terminology switch. That alleviates some of the safety concern.
iii. Someone
comes to the door.
g.
At SPI, they’ve been sticking to “once you’re
in, you’re in”. If you want to eat
dinner, you need to be there by the time.
They’re dealing with the same staffing concern. When folks are into SPI, they’re there for
the night.
h.
What’s the rationale for having consistency
across the shelter?
i. So clients
don’t go shelter shopping, so we have more community resistance. It’s an effort to align services.
1.
The consistency would be the greatest benefit,
when we’re looking to move folks from cold weather shelters into longer term
beds. If the consistency we get is some
agreed upon time, that may be the largest benefit. It may not be 100% a match.
2.
Is there a will to have consistency,
particularly during winter?
a.
Fred’s preference is to have a consistent
policy, but the details may vary slightly by individual shelters.
i. We agree
that we all have the same closing time.
1.
Lauren thinks we’ll keep getting pushback from
DOH. ImmaCare and SA aren’t going.
ii. Stephanie
asked what’s the rationale to not have a curfew?
1.
It’s punitive, and we can’t discharge for it
under DOH regulations. It’s also about
making it low barrier. Folks are
refusing shelter because of punitive rules.
It’s about treating clients as adults.
2.
It comes down to language, though.
a.
If we say “we don’t have a curfew, but we will
close the doors at midnight. And if
you’re not here, we may fill your bed”.
b.
Kay of National Alliance had mentioned that
this language is the preference if folks are going to lock their doors. It’s about strongly encouraging folks to be
there at 11PM.
c.
South Park agrees it’s more a language issue,
not a practice issue. We haven’t been
enforcing curfews anyways. We can
discuss as part of the learning collaborative.
But nobody should be losing their beds because they show up 15 minutes
late. It’s challenging to have this in
your rules and not enforce it.
i. Most
people are there for dinner. Most
exceptions are at a job, an event, etc.
d.
Fred wants to ensure that folks still have
access to SmartSheets, so folks can continue to bring folks in from SmartSheets
or warming center.
i. Do we want
this consistent too?
1.
Lauren’s thinking back – how long do we commit
to hold a bed for? How long do we allow
beds to stay vacant?
2.
Shelters will bring this up at the next
meeting.
e.
From Diversion Center – it would be helpful to
know what the language ends up looking like, because as the other front door,
Stephanie would like to make sure that her team knows this, and has some
strength in place.
i. Diversion
staff will begin calling shelters to make sure this isn’t happening.
9.
Prioritization of Housing: Families
Coordinated Exit – Lisa Quach
a.
At ATI, there was a presentation about ending
family homelessness. One thing that we
took away from their training is that their housing list is sorted by their
length of homeless history. USICH is
focused on a length of stay. We’re
looking at a 45 day length of stay.
Fairfield County has been sorting their list looking at homeless
history. We presented this to the family
matching group in May, and worked with Fairfield CAN.
b.
Everyone received a document with two versions
of sorting. On the first side, the list
was sorted based on VI-SPDAT score. On
the second side, we sorted things by the length of time homeless. We also want to consider episodes as a
sorting criteria. Some concerns from the
committee was “what about new folks, will they always be at the bottom?”
i. But we’re
hoping that Rapid Exit HOME dollars can assist.
The way we have historically been sorting things
ii. If we
switch to looking at disabling conditions, it will be really essential to
collect this information. There’s a
field in CT HMIS that we can use to track disabling conditions. Right now, the way we’re gathering the data,
Lisa has been counting folks’ homeless history.
As folks are entering the system,
iii. A few
things we need to still work on – in Fairfield County, folks who are episodic
are a little bit more vulnerable than folks who are continuously in
shelter. That’s one thing to keep in
mind.
iv. Rebekah is
thinking about Diversion training, the first predict tor of homelessness is
past homelessness. So it makes sense to
look at it this way.
v. Lionel
asked about discounting the VI – Heather said that since we’re realistically
looking at every single client. And
seeing the sorted list really matched up more closely than we thought it would
for the needs of families in our shelters.
For someone like the second person on the list, even if we did a fuller
assessment, this client presents extremely well, but has spent years and years
homeless. He has already tried a wide
variety of programs.
vi. All the
people on this list are very frequent flyers on this list. They are coming to shelter diversion all the
time.
1.
One concern that came up is that folks will
find out about this process, and folks may sabotage their housing to come back
into the list. That is a concern. In Fairfield County, that hasn’t come up
yet.
2.
It’s interesting that the VI-SPDAT score does
not seem to correlate with the months homeless.
vii. We will
implement this for next meeting.
10.
Subcommittee Reports:
a.
Diversion Center – Stephanie Corbin
i. The last
few months have been good at Diversion Center, with consistent staffing. We’re scheduling 175 appointments per
week. Diversion Center is cleaning the
shelter waitlist. That has been mostly
working – we have a lot of shelter waitlist issues. Diversion Center will be hiring an admin
which will be a lot of help. No real
concerns around much, but a few things on functionality.
1.
We are struggling with appointments when CT
HMIS goes down. Diversion can’t shut
down appointments when CT HMIS is going down.
2.
We are struggling with not getting SmartSheets
updated around the vacancies. Stephanie
is calling every single shelter every day to see what’s available. It’s been mostly quiet.
b.
Homeless Outreach – Mollie Greenwood
i. CRT might
be using some of their training dollars to get some of the HPD more training to
help them be more included in our system.
ii. Are any of
the providers willing to stick to a schedule of outreach?
iii. Rebekah is
open to changing. Rebekah would like to
see him going out in a team to do outreach.
1.
We can ask UCONN if they have folks who are
interested in going out. UCONN has been
very helpful around CRT items. Social
work students have been really receptive.
2.
The concern with Rebekah in interns is that
folks who choose to stay out really benefit from just having one person
involved.
3.
What about partnering with case management
teams – having them go with tony?
a.
Letticia suggested having some Chrysalis
center case mangers go out with Tony. To
deepen that connection with Tony.
4.
Rebekah’s other thing. When Rebekah was doing outreach, now folks
are trying to verify their homelessness, and do their paperwork. That could be neat.
5.
It would be great to get the supervisors
around the table to talk about possibilities.
Kelly can schedule that meeting.
11.
Shelter Overflow Capacity for Families: Next
Steps – Matt Morgan
a.
Mollie will schedule a meeting with family
shelters to discuss next steps on implementing the overflow plan.
b.
There is 6,000 that may be available from CIA
funds, but it’s only a partial amount of what is required. $60 per night will not actually cover the
full additional expense shelters could incur in taking this on.
12.
Staffing and Capacity for RRH Programs – RRH
Programs
a.
Mercy has a start date – they’ll have a case
manager for July 9th!
b.
CHR will be taking referrals next week
c.
CRT – their case manager is out temporarily,
and they’re using other case managers to cover her caseload.
d.
Salvation Army still isn’t taking folks on new
referrals, and is looking to exit existing clients as soon as possible.
13. GH CAN
Shelter and Housing Data – Mollie Greenwood
i. See p.2
14. Future
Agenda Items?
15. Announcements
a.
HMIS fees are covered for this year! Letters are coming out soon.
b.
Youth Homeless Demonstration Project (YHDP)
has been awarded statewide. Connection,
Salvation Army, CRT, and Journey Home are the GH CAN awardees. No more information is available yet.
c.
Dinner in the Park will be held this Saturday,
June 23rd at 5:00 PM. Journey
Home will be providing a free meal at Bushnell Park, near the pump house.
d.
Salv Army still has openings in their camp for
the week of July 23rd. They
are bussed from Hartford to Ashford.
It’s one week. Ages 8-12
e.
GH CAN Housing Data
|
Data Element
|
Number
|
Notes
|
|
Chronically homeless households
housed in 2015
|
102
|
This includes clients housed through
GH CAN programs as well as through other subsidies or independent housing
|
|
Chronically homeless households
housed in 2016
|
211
|
This includes clients housed
through GH CAN programs as well as through other subsidies or independent
housing
|
|
Chronically homeless households
housed in 2017
|
179
|
This includes clients housed
through GH CAN programs as well as through other subsidies or independent
housing
|
|
Chronically homeless households
housed in 2018
|
54
|
This includes clients housed
through GH CAN programs as well as through other subsidies or independent
housing
|
|
Total Chronically homeless
households housed in GH CAN
|
546
|
|
|
Verified Chronic Matched
|
37
|
|
|
Verified Chronic Not Yet
Matched
|
4
|
We currently have 4 chronic
verified clients who have not yet been matched to housing.
|
|
Potentially Chronic Refusers
|
2
|
|
|
Verified Chronic Refusers
|
2
|
|
|
Potentially Chronic Matched
|
3
|
These households did not
disclose a disabling condition, and are matched to various programs.
|
|
Not Chronic Matched
|
7
|
|
|
Potentially Chronic Not Yet
Matched
|
36
|
Right now we believe 36 households have the chronic length of
homeless history, but none of these individuals have their homeless and disability
verifications completed.
|
|
Individuals - Active – Not
Matched
|
555
|
This is Enrolled in CAN,
Enrolled in TH, and In an Institution
|
|
Families – Active – Not Matched
|
22
|
This is Enrolled in CAN
|
SmartSheet
Shelter Priority List Data
|
Individual Men
|
Individual Women
|
Families
|
|
177 Unsheltered
|
73 Unsheltered
|
26 Unsheltered
|
|
254 Total
|
135 Total
|
60 Total
|
GH CAN Subcommittee Report: GH Outreach
Committee Name: Outreach
Committee Chairs: Janet Bermudez
Committee Goal: To ensure that the entire unsheltered
population is being engaged with as well as connected to services needed
including housing.
Significant Achievements in the past 3 months:
1.
Meeting
Time has been changed to accommodate all outreach providers
2.
Outreach
Referral Form on Smartsheets has been changed in order to meet the goals of
outreach and diversion to increase client engagement. For example:
a.
Referrals made to correct provider
b.
Appropriate
services offered to assist the unsheltered population
3.
Gaps in
outreach have been identified and Outreach Coordinator will cover these gaps.
Gaps identified were:
a.
Clients
with no phone numbers or third party phone numbers
Concerns with the structure of the meeting:
·
Meeting Time
o No
issues with meeting time; currently meeting every 2nd and 4th
Wednesday of the month at 10 am.
·
Attendance of any organizations
o Attendance
has been a struggle; It is very important for all members of outreach and community
providers to attend this meeting in order to ensure we are closing any gaps and
the providers have all the tools needed to assist their clients with housing
and other services.
·
Consistency of meeting goals
o No
issues with meeting goals; As a team we have been able to discuss major issues
in the outreach world as well as setting goals and executing them.
Assistance needed from Operations Committee:
·
Are there any CAN processes that are getting in
the way of this committee’s work?
o No
·
Are there any daily problems with things like
HMIS, communication between organizations, or shelter or housing program
policies?
o Communication
between organizations has been an issue, but was recently resolved by
communicating these concerns with our partner agencies.
·
Are there any resources that you have questions
about, or need more training on?
o As
of right now the priority is to ensure all outreach partners are Narcan trained
and have it on their person.
Assistance needed from Leadership Committee:
·
Are there any gaps in services or financial
assistance that is harming our clients? If so, what are the gaps?
o I
do believe we need more outreach providers in our CAN. As well as more flexibility when it comes to
Outreach provider’s schedule.
·
Are there issues with any staff’s ability to
prepare for or participate in this committee?
o No
GH CAN Subcommittee Report: Diversion Center Team
Committee Name: Diversion Specialists
Committee Chairs: Stephanie Corbin
Committee Goal: Improve shelter diversion rates, work to
help divert households seeking shelter.
Coordinate with shelters.
Significant Achievements in the past 3 months:
1.
Cleaning shelter waitlist for clients that have not been
active in more than 90 days.
2.
Received permission to hire an admin.
Concerns with the structure of the meeting:
·
N/A (Diversion staff case conference all households coming through
Diversion on a daily basis)
Assistance needed from Operations Committee:
·
Are there any CAN processes that are getting in the way of this
committee’s work? No
·
Are there any daily problems with things like HMIS, communication
between organizations, or shelter or housing program policies?
·
MDC struggles when HMIS goes down for
maintenance during appointment hours.
·
We have
noticed that shelters have not been updating the smart sheet, making it
difficult to fill open beds effectively.
·
Are there any resources that you have questions about, or need more
training on? No
Assistance needed from Leadership Committee:
·
Are there any gaps in services or financial assistance that is harming
our clients? If so, what are the gaps?
·
Are there issues with any staff’s ability to prepare for or participate
in this committee? N/A
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