GH CAN Leadership Committee 4/19/17

Greater Hartford Coordinated Access Network

Leadership Agenda

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

1.      Welcome and Introductions

Kara Capobianco – Department of Housing

Sarah Dimaio – Salvation Army Marshall House

Amy Robinson – US Department of Veterans Affairs

John Lawlor – The Connection

Rosemary Flowers – My Sisters’ Place

Kathy Shaw – My Sisters’ Place

Tenesha Grant  - Mercy Housing and Shelter Corp

Kyren McCorey – The Open Hearth

Fred Faulkner – The Open Hearth

Brian Baker – South Park Inn

Collette Slover – Charter Oak Health Center

Sonia Brown – Community Renewal Team

John Ferrucci – South Park Inn

Lou Gilbert - ImmaCare

Iris Ruiz – Interval House

Mollie Greenwood – Journey Home

Matt Morgan – Journey Home

Theresa Nicholson – Chrysalis Center

2.      Housing Data Updates – see p. 2

a.      Housing resources have really slowed down but the community has been doing a great job getting folks verified.  We currently have 61 clients who are potentially chronic and need disability verifications or homeless verifications.

b.      63 chronic verified matched – delay could be clients going MIA, CHFA barriers are now higher, clients refusing housing multiple times.  We have specifically seen a lot of refusals around project-based units. Those housing programs who are audited by CSH may be penalized if their utilization is low, which can be a result of households being housed too slowly. How many clients are matched and chronic verified more than 90 days?

c.      Everyone needs to have a representative at coordinated exit. We need to have better communication to get updates about pending referrals and case conferences. It’s really essential to have staff present at in-person meetings. Have 2 in person meetings a month and we do lots of matching and case conferencing so when folks aren’t at the table, it’s a challenge.

3.      CT BOS Performance Measures Update and Deadline – Cat Damato, Crane Cesario

                                                    i.     All should have email from CT BOS about performance measures. If not, Crane will send it to you. The deadline to clean up your data is 4/28/17 which is a week from Friday.

                                                   ii.     Right now there is a known problem with questions about chronic status and health insurance. Nobody in family program is answering health insurance question. Is data not collected really count?     

                                                  iii.     On page 5 of 6 there is a question that is concerned with exits to permanent destination. Because this field wasn’t previously collected, housing programs might have to go in and go back to all original clients and input the data. Only APRs for PSH that she sees.

1.      Crane printed out each agency in our CAN that she could get to – timeliness report. When you look at CT BOS email, instructions on how to get reports in HMIS are in there. Line that has data standards. Shows all programs – how many days your data was inputted in your program – average days. Now it has to be 11. Something we need to improve on, depending on your program type. Just something for them to look at, shocking wake up call. Performance measures are for Balance of State so everywhere but Fairfield County, they have their own report.

                                                  iv.     How do we pay for all this? Proposal to have 2% of total budget pay for CAN functions. 2% of which budget? We have planning grant, reallocated funds to HMIS and CAN and Permanent Supportive Housing – 9 individual units for referrals – under Capital Region. Still waiting to see if state is going to pick up CAHBI but with this budget, she doesn’t think so. Will lose about 5 people. CT BOS meeting on Friday. Sonia said when she ran her APR there was a lot of missing data because of updated questions so she had to go back and have them answer. Crane said who told her to go back and fix. She currently has 135 clients in one program that are missing one question and she might not get them done by Friday. She needs clarity from CT BOS if it’s internal review of CT then can they give them a break for a month? Sarah said she had issues with children in her data and can’t fix it because the question doesn’t exist anymore. She reached out to Nutmeg and they said she just has to deal with it. Crane said she is just at the level where she just wants to pass, be above the ladder. Outcomes from exits is important. Legacy clients who were allowed to go from TLP to PSH and are we going to get dinged every year because they haven’t moved out?

4.      HUD Coordinated Entry Self-Assessment Items – Mollie Greenwood

a.      HUD put out guidance on what coordinated entry needs to be doing and has created a checklist you can go through and what your community is already doing and what we should be doing. HUD wants us to do everything on this checklist by January of next year. At Journey Home, we been reviewing the checklist to see what GH CAN is doing to make sure we can reach benchmarks by January 2018.

                                                    i.     Accessibility of Coordinated Entry Site (p. 3)

1.      We need to be able to provide accessible assessment appointments to households with hearing impairments, vision impairments, and other disabilities, as well as providing translation services for any households whose first language isn’t English. 

a.      Theresa suggested medical providers because they are required to have medical paperwork in client’s language.

b.      Iris said Coalition has language line for all DV networks. Will look to see if they have contract with Language Line or if it’s per charge.

                                                   ii.     Written Standards for RRH Programs (p. 3)

1.      No one in GH CAN RRH program has a written standard at this point that outlines the specific amount of rental assistance that will be provided for each household.  One suggestion was for RRH providers to come together to see if we can draft something. Sarah asked if it’s one standard for the whole CAN or by program since her budget is so small compared to others.

2.      Another suggestion was to ask CT BOS if they have a standard. Have standard of increase in payment. Have something in guidelines. CRT tried to adapt these guidelines when building their program.

a.      Mollie will look into the CT BOS COC Policies and Procedures to see what is currently provided as a written standard and will bring that information back to Leadership.

3.      Fairfield County had a one pager for clients but it backfired because they would have something to show that they would only pay 50% in month 6.

b.      Timeline between Assessment and Referral (p. 3)

                                                    i.     Needs to have prioritization list – we have a by-name-list. Should not wait 60 days to housing referral services. If they cannot offer within 60 days, then they adjust prioritization standards in order to prioritize households who have the highest need. We need to be aiming at getting prioritized household matched to homeless resource within 60 days or not. Have been changing Enrolled in CAN date for folks who were inactive or had their VI-SDPAT completed and then disappeared and came back so we are getting credit and doesn’t show a lag.

c.      Crane asked if this is something Mollie was asked to investigate or if she’s being proactive? She stated she was being proactive because she didn’t want to wait until November to try to tackle 15 things. Crane said she wants COC to own up to it as the entity to deal with it, as much of the list requires COCs to have written processes and be following this.

d.      Lou asked about shelter priority list. ImmaCare had 8 empty beds and couldn’t reach the people at the top so he’s taking walk-ins who are on the prioritized section of the shelter priority list. Is this a problem?

                                                    i.     Kara reminded shelters that the contractual expectation is to ensure shelters remain 80% full. We don’t want to fill beds with people who can be diverted. As the weather continues to get warmer, this may become a larger issue. One question is are we as a community going through right channels to access those who outdoors because we start offering doors to someone who could be diverted?

                                                   ii.     Sarah asked how far down staff are going to fill beds- are the folks ImmaCare is taking in still in the unsheltered or living in their car section of the priority list?

1.      Lou doesn’t think they are calling everyone but just taking walk-ins.

2.      Steve checks the smartsheet to see if folks at the bottom are getting shelter before other folks and that hasn’t happened yet at ImmaCare- when cases like that are identified he has been quickly reaching out to the shelters who are taking those folks from lower on the list to determine what is going on.

5.      Coordinated Exit: What to do when households refuse multiple housing options? – Tenesha Grant

a.      An issue we have been seeing recently in the Coordinated Exit meeting is clients who have been offered and keep declining housing.  Sometimes they are refusing housing options because they have barriers or trauma in certain areas, other times it is more a matter of preference.

                                                    i.     We can’t stop offering them housing. As long as they’re literally homeless we have to keep offering them housing, because they are still a part of the community.

1.      One question is should we kick them out of shelter if we have offered them all types of housing and we have exhausted all options? We can no longer offer you shelter bed because you have had 6 or 7 opportunities for housing.  We need to have case conferencing before we make this decision.

2.      In some cases, maybe the client is just not a good fit with their current case manager, in other cases they may be getting comfortable in the current shelter environment. A change of environment to a new shelter may solve the problem in some cases.

3.      A long time ago we had a dedicated committee that had hoped to work on these specific challenging cases.  Fred Faulkner offered to lead this committee.

a.      Fred and Mollie will talk together about what time and group of providers makes the most sense to do this type of case conferencing.

6.      Veteran Eligibility for Supportive Housing – Amy Robinson

a.      Veterans that are in TLP do hold chronic status and are considered homeless going into other programs. We will be getting additional guidance from Katie Durand and HUD very soon. If a veteran is in a transitional living program, HUD says they are still homeless and don’t lose chronic status. One line that makes all the difference in this guidance is that veterans who are considered homeless are also considered homeless within 2 weeks of not having a place to stay (when other populations are just considered at risk). Guidance from HUD was if the TLP provider says to you that this person in TLP status prior to entry was homelessness that’s all we need in our files for us to be in compliance but if you take HUD homeless definition and GPD and TLP side by side that is the difference – eligible for GPD imminent risk within 14 days.

b.      There was still a question of whether this qualify for GPD (VET TLP) or regular TLP?

c.      There have also been historic issues with determining who is considered veteran – must serve 2 years after 1980 and have honorable discharge to be considered a veteran.

7.      Announcements

a.      The CT Coalition to End Homelessness will be hosting their Annual Training Institute on Thursday, May 18^th.  Register online at www.cceh.org. Early-bird registration discounts are available until May 1^st.

b.      There are openings available in this month’s full-day CAN Training on Friday, 4/21.  Email mollie.greenwood@journeyhomect.org to register.

c.      The next Youth Engagement Team Initiative (YETI) meeting will be this Friday, 4/21, at 3:30 at 960 Main St., Hartford.  Contact Steve Hurley for more information.

d.      Journey Home has written letters of support for all of our GHBI SAMHSA applicants.

                                                    i.     All letters of support have been written for 3 applicants.

                                                   ii.     Total statewide for advocacy day reached 135 legislators or their aid.

e.      S8HCV has closed – housing authority is not taking referrals but we are still keeping a waitlist for S8HCV – has 11 people from PSH that are applying for that preference. 7 chronic clients still on the list. Heard from city of Hartford to encourage the 16 people who have received vouchers already – worried about what is going to happen at federal level – encouraging them to get leased up asap. 85 clients have leased up from PSH. One at ImmaCare and rest at Chrysalis.

f.       Hartford Health Dept. that we have 8 active TB guests from last week. Roger will track down clients to get to Hartford Health Dept. to get chest XRays.

g.      SAMH has overflow shelter – contract is for cold weather overflow shelter but have been running it year round without funding but we can no longer do that – only Nov 1 to march 31^st. Have transitioned all into housing except for one family. Loss of 23 beds for women and families.

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	64	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	377
Verified Chronic Matched	63
Verified Chronic Not Yet Matched	15	We currently have 15 chronic verified clients who have not yet been matched to housing.
Potentially Chronic Matched	0
Potentially Chronic Not Yet Matched	61	Right now we believe 65 households have the chronic length of homeless history, but none of these individuals have their homeless and disability verifications completed.

Coordinated Entry Self-Assessment

A.8. COC, in consultation with recipients of ESG program funds within the geographic area, has established and consistently follows written standards for providing COC assistance which can guide the development of formalized policies and procedures for the CE process.

·        Written standards provide guidance for determining what percentage or amount of rent each program participant must pay while receiving rapid rehousing assistance.

B. 11. COC's written CE policies and procedures document steps taken to ensure effective communication with individuals with disabilities.  Recipients of federal funds and COCs must provide appropriate auxiliary aids and services necessary to ensure effective communication (e.g. Braille, audio, large type, assistive listening devices, and sign language interpreters. 
B. 12. COC's access point(s) take reasonable steps to offer CE process materials and participant instruction in multiple languages to meet the needs of minority, ethnic, and groups with Limited English Proficiency.

D. 14. COC maintains a prioritization list such that participants wait no longer than 60 days for a referral to housing or services.  If the COC cannot offer a housing resource to every prioritized household experiencing homelessness within 60 days or less, then the COC adjusts prioritization standards in order to more precisely differentiate and identify resources for those households with the most needs and highest vulnerabilities.

Data on Average Timeframes for Individuals from the By-Name-List in HMIS	Time (days)
Chronic Individuals in PSH
Average time between completing a VI-SPDAT to verifying CH status	301
Average time between verification of CH status to housing	86
Average time between CH verification and housing matching to PSH	7
Average time between referral of CH clients and housing in PSH	79
Chronic Individuals in RRH
Average time between completing a VI-SPDAT to referral in RRH	315
Average time between referral of CH clients and housing in RRH	57
Non-Chronic Individuals and RRH
For non-chronic individuals, average time between completing a VI-SPDAT to referral in RRH	144
For non-chronic individuals, average time between referral to RRH and housing	55

GH CAN Operations 4/5/17

Greater Hartford Coordinated Access Network

Operations Agenda

Wednesday, April 5^th, 2017

176 Pliny Street, Hartford

Attended: Brian Baker- South Park Inn, Roger Clark - ImmaCare, Tylon Crump – CRT SSVF, Rochelle Currie – The Connection, Collette Slover – Charter Oak Health Center, Catherine Damato - CRT, Jacqueline Farmer- Veterans Inc., Fred Faulkner – The Open Heart, Kyren McCrorey – The Open Hearth, John Ferrucci – South Park Inn, Mollie Greenwood – Journey Home, Amber Higgins – CHR Manchester, Steve Hurley – Journey Home, Nichole Milton – CHR Enfield, Matt Morgan – Journey Home, Lisa Quach – Journey Home, Wendy Walker – CRT McKinney, Alise Rangasammy - ImmaCare, Madeline Trinidad – Salvation Army Marshall House, Kelanda Santos – My Sisters’ Place, Iesha Lopez – CRT McKinney, Robert Weatherington – CRT McKinney, Monique Shand - YWCA, Klaudia Lobeska – CRT East Hartford Family Shelter, and Manuel Cadenas – Catholic Charities

1.      Welcome and Introductions

2.      Coordinated Exit:

a.      Housing Data – see p. 2

b.      Recently Housed – Lisa Quach

-        Wendy asks about the status of permanent supportive housing openings.

-        Mollie says that due to the zero campaign 16 ending the amount of available permanent supportive housing has slowed down.

c.      Bridging Families – Mollie Greenwood

-        Mollie says that the GH CAN community rarely has verified chronic families and it looks like for families who are not successful in rapid re housing they can be bridged to permanent support housing. The New Haven CAN has already started this process with their families and the GH CAN might be doing this in the next couple of months.

-        Amber asks how to determine which family gets permanent housing between a family in a shelter for 10 months or a family that is failing out of rapid rehousing.

o   This will need to be discussed and determined by the RRH committee on a case by case basis, and ultimately we will need to determine how we will prioritize households.

d.      Failing out of CAN Housing Programs – Lisa Quach

-        Mollie says if people know if clients are failing out of their housing program to bring them up during housing matching meetings. Therefore, the CAN create a strategy to prevent the client from failing out of the program.

-        Lisa says that Tenesha at Mercy would like to discuss about chronic clients who are close to failing to discuss them at the end of the month housing matching meeting, at the in-person meeting.

e.      Full SPDATs – Update from trainings

-        Because there have been so many full SPDATs completed recently, keeping track of who has completed a full SPDAT is becoming more complex.  Lisa asks when people are completing the VI SPDAT to upload them into HMIS, so everyone can see that particular client has already completed a VI SPDAT. Also, send the last two pages that have scoring summaries to Lisa.

3.      Coordinated Entry:

a.      Households without phones, visit Mercy – Steve Hurley

-        Steve says that during CAN appointments when clients are added to the shelter priority list and do not have a phone they can put Mercy’s phone number down as their primary contact information. Clients are encouraged to go to Mercy to get breakfast and lunch to get food and check to see their status on the shelter priority list.

-        Jacqueline asks about assurance phones.

-        Mollie says Assurance has been inconsistent with scheduling and the proper paper work.

4.      Outreach Programs in Greater Hartford: PATH Team – Malika Nelson

-        JeNaya says to make sure when completing PATH referral to have a phone number available and if not write the locations for where the client is during different hours during the day. Also to fill out the description section of the form to help the PATH team find the clients.

-        JeNaya asks about third party verifications from soup kitchens?

o   Lisa says you can accept verifications when finding clients at soup kitchens as long as the letter has detailed information about the client such as the number of days being there or wearing the same clothes every time appearing.

5.      Charter Oak Shelter Clinic Hours – Collette Slover

-        Collette says Charter Oak does have urgent hours available, which the urgent care card will be distributed during the meeting.

-        John asks if Charter Oak offers services at Mercy Diversion Center.

-        Collette says yes they are there on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

-        John suggests Charter Oak has access to the shelter priority list to see if people on the priority list who are not in shelter can get access to services.

-        Collette says Charter Oak can provide primary care to clients even when they are permanently housed.

-        John suggests Charter Oak provide a dvd to show clients the services that Charter Oak can provide.

-        Lisa suggests that MANA could be another location where a lot of the homeless population go to get food.

6.      Announcements

a.      Advocacy Day will take place Wednesday, April 12^th.

b.      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

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	57	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	370
Verified Chronic Matched	63
Verified Chronic Not Yet Matched	11	We currently have 11 chronic verified clients who have not yet been matched to housing.
Potentially Chronic Matched	0
Potentially Chronic Not Yet Matched	65	Right now we believe 65 households have the chronic length of homeless history, but none of these individuals have their homeless and disability verifications completed.

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