Thursday, October 24, 2019

Oct. 16, 2019 GH CAN Leadership Meeting Notes






  1.  Welcome and Introductions

●       Sofina Begum - Journey Home

●       Yoshi Bird - South Park Inn

●       Sonia Brown - CRT

●       Letticia Brown-Gambino - Chrysalis Center

●       Kara Capobianco - Department of Housing

●       Crane Cesario - DMHAS

●       Sarah DiMiao - Salvation Army Marshal House

●       Lauren Fair - Salvation Army Marshall House

●       Fred Faulkner - The Open Hearth

●       Heather Flannery - Interval House

●       Alexis Gaynor - Journey Home

●       John Lawlor - The Connection

●       Rebekah Lyas - ImmaCare

●       Elijah McFolley - The Open Hearth

●       Lionel Rigler - City of Hartford

●       Tyeisha Saffold - CRT EH Shelter

●       Sharon Redfern - Cornerstone

  1. Career Pathways Program Presentation – Roy Mainelli, Journey Home

●       Successful 5 year program that Journey Home would like to continue to grow by training prospective employees for trade jobs

●       In the past 5 years 50 plus people have been employed through this employment program

●       The Open Hearth has been a big participant of the program

●       Hartford Foundation for Public Giving would like to continue to fund and support the growth of the program

●       Right now there are 14 positions with 5 companies open, the Career Pathways Employment Program would like to open the opportunity to all CAN members to encourage clients to join the program

●       3 month vetting process for selecting candidates

  1. Cold Weather Update – Sarah Dimaio

●       Opening date for Willie Ware Warming Center will be December 1st with a possible closing date of March 31st

●       The Warming Center will have up to 20 front line employees

●       Salvation Army Marshall House has started to interview for positions and is hoping to hire

●       The Salvation Army Marshall House Overflow Shelter will have 23 beds for families and 4 dedicated beds for single women

●       Salvation Army Marshall House is recruiting churches in the area to host one night a week to open capacity, they have reached out to 7 churches with the possibility of 3 of them coming on board.

●       This year at the Warming Center, there will not be a case manager. However, diversion appointments will be done on site to divert as many clients as possible. Immacare will provide one FTE to assist with diversion

  1. Shelter Report Out on Progress in Changing the Narrative to be Strength-based – South Park Inn, McKinney, Salvation Army, YWCA, East Hartford Shelter, Open Hearth

●       McKinney, YWCA, and South Park Inn were not present for the discussion

●       East Hartford Shelter reported that they are training their staff to focus their conversations to be more about housing; having the clients consider housing options with family/friends, shared housing, or roommate situations (doubled-up safe)

●       Open Hearth is encouraging staff to engage in a casual conversation with clients more often. Staff is having a 2nd “Diversion” conversation with clients, to explore options to self-resolve.

●       Shelters are working on training their staff on how to engage with clients to help them get out of the shelters

●       The Salvation Army changed job descriptions about a year ago. It is now mandatory for all staff to complete (3) NAEH webinars per month. Each client has a housing plan, which are kept in the front office so that each shift has access to the housing plan. Each shift has been given assignments, specifically to search for housing resources/listings.

●       Report out on Potentially Chronic clients – shelters, outreach programs

●       Some shelters have reported that many of the clients are missing Disability Verification

●       The Open Hearth has reported that all 4 of their Potentially Chronic clients have or are receiving support. Two of their clients have moved on to permanent based housing, one of their clients has a Disability verfication, and one is difficult but they are receiving the support they need from Open Hearth.

  1. Homeless Outreach Gap/Issues

●       Evening outreach is still needed but Salvation Army is planning on hiring two full time employees dedicated to outreach

●       Salvation Army plans to do night time outreach 3 days a week for about 6 weeks; Staff will only canvass the community to surveys in order to capture demographics and last zip code

●       Teams of 3 people will be going out from 6pm to 11pm to verify clients

●       Alexis is forming a volunteer group to do outreach after hours- date to be determined based on doodle poll that was sent out by Alexis

  1. PIT Update – Crane Cesario and Alexis Gaynor

●       2020’s PIT count will be held on January 22nd in the morning from 5 am to 7am

●       HUD CoC grants require organizations provide at least one volunteer for PIT

●       PIT office hours to be determined

  1. Updates and Next Steps on Local Strategies on Long Stayers in Shelter – Stephanie Corbin, Sarah Dimaio, Rebekah Lyas, Barbara Shaw, Crane Cesario, Lisa Quach

●       All shelters need to report on the changes they are implementing for more strength based results

●       Trainings to come soon with CSH collaborative training focusing on race and equity

  1. New Agenda Items

●       Wiping Smart Sheets clean in preparation for Cold-weather

●       Proposal: No longer having diversion staff add people to shelter-waitlist. Outreach will canvass, verify, and add to the waitlist. 

  1. Announcements


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