GREATER HARTFORD
COORDINATED ACCESS NETWORK MEETING AGENDA
Follow
Up Meeting
Wednesday,
June 17th via Zoom
1PM – 2:15PM
1. Welcome
and Introductions – 5 minutes
2. COVID
– 19 – 15 minutes
i.
Agency Update
1.
Lisa from Salvation Army – bring back essential
social services staff who operates food pantries, financial assistance,
including diversion and homeless prevention starting 7/13/2020, moving around
offices for spacing and other protocols. Resources for COVID will be allocated
to GH CAN.
2.
Fred – The Open Hearth – begun to open up,
resumed employment searches and intakes into TEP and Catherine’s Place from
various treatment centers/off the streets if willing to be tested. Looking to
open up shelter program fairly soon. TOH will take a client in into isolation
until test result comes back. Emphasizing to treatment center that if possible
they test prior.
3.
Rebekah – ImmaCare, open! Doing as much by phone
as possible, community room upstairs is closed but case managers can meet with
clients there if necessary to allow extra space, extra PPE and cleaning stuff
in place. Looking at mid-August open date for shelter.
4.
Jen – CHR – no new staff or client COVID cases.
Increasing availability to see clients face to face. Most of staff will be home
based and come into office as needed. Looking to increase more face to face
contact – from emergency basis to normal/routine
5.
Steve Bigler – CRT, no cases at McKinney or East
Hartford shelter among staff or clients – working on return to work policy but
due to size of agency and funders/mixed use trying to find way to bring back
staff and clients in the building at one time. Still remote – all programs are
open and doing phone calls and doing case management over phone. Still looking
for veterans – VA has reduced restrictions. Does not need NTQ anymore, just
need letter from landlord behind on rent and can assist financially.
At-risk/unstably housed, let CRT SSVF know.
6.
Crane – no updates on cases at this point. Most
staff will stay working remotely until 7/20/2020.
7.
Heather – Interval House – no new updates.
Continuing to operate, leaving clients separate in rooms. Non-essential staff
at least through July, possibly further working remotely.
8.
Yoshi - South Park Inn- no new COVID cases,
keeping staff working, no other changes. Looking at space with Jane to make
space more safe given a return to primary site.
9.
Cathy Z – YWCA, no new COVID cases. Continuing
to take new cases. Starting to see staff having to go out on CARES leave due to
childcare issue, down PSH CM and part time program manager.
10.
Kara Capone – no new cases to report, return for
non-essential employees plan, right amount of PPE, stockpile in anticipation of
spikes across the country, Plexiglas – any non-essential staff that can work
from home is still working from home – soft opening in July. Watchful waiting.
11.
John Lawlor – The Connection – no positive
cases, returning to meeting with staff this Monday.
12.
Kimberly May Miller – chrysalis – no positive
cases they are aware of. Opened up administrating on 5/11 – front line staff
returned on 5/20/20. Looking back rec entry for participants (10 at a time)
lottery process. Have participants who are not ready to come. Looking at
volunteer policy. Temperatures are taken on everyone before they’re entering
the building everyday – monitoring questions. Identified new CPO – Brian Bonds,
will be starting 7/13/2020.
3. COVID
Testing
a.
PPE – Journey Home has been requesting supplies
on behalf of CAN, continuing to take requests through Alison – Steve Dilella is
asking for another request for PPE – plan to stockpile, did not mention how
long so we are using 6 month period – if you want to submit numbers you can,
will look at past usage and project out for past 6 months – wants to get
request in ASAP while emergency operations center is still operating.
b.
Several statewide task force on testing –
protocols – try to do testing as consistently as possible across the state.
Successfully tested at two hotels and TOH. Testing at hotels again on 6/24/2020
– if you want all congregate settings get tested – Amanda gathered list before
Memorial Day of sites that need to be tested on a continuous basis – plan is
locally we have to come up with plan – has to be on us as a CAN To work with
healthcare providers to get testing plan in place – no guidelines about how
often to get population retested – might be realistic to do it once per month.
TOH has been testing every 2 weeks, this coming Wednesday is last of the two
weeks series – if numbers continue, will go to monthly. If numbers go up, will
bring it back to two weeks. If we go to HHC for testing, need to provide roster
up front but roster changes all the time. After each testing, the data is
supposed to go into HMIS so ROI needs to be sign with healthcare provider and
HMIS ROI. Amanda sending batch info for testing. Moving forward need to figure
out who will be doing data upload (each agency will be responsible). Start by
going over list of sites and then go to HHC – goal on statewide call was to
have every site tested by end of June.
4. Statewide
ESG-COVID Housing Effort Update –Andrea Hakian and Crane Cesario – 15 minutes
a.
RRH combined for GH & Central CAN –
Prevention is half hour for GH CAN & then half hour for Central CAN – if
interested in joining, please send Matt & Sofina an email so we can send
invite to meetings.
b.
Prevention – different strategies that have been
named so far – tenant resource center providing legal services & rental
arrears/financial assistance and case management services. One per each CAN.
Potential sites. Discussed swift factory, CRT’s community centers, Salvation
Army’s two sites as potential sites for these services using ESG funds,
reaching out to GH legal aid to employ attorney presuming we get funding.
Utility assistance covid – telehealth in home for people after COVID. If you
have thoughts on what it would take to provide telehealth (technology or
services to go to the house with technology, let us know) looking for new ideas
as planning eviction/prevention stuff. Increasing diversion capacity in both
CANS to provide additional diversion services. Immacare staff will not be doing
diversion once shelter opens. Want to increase capacity anyway to increase time
with household and not waiting 48 hours to be scheduled. Trying to provide more
front end support.
c.
RRH – CHR will be subcontracting to Mercy for at
least one staff position – in house for rest of positions. Aggressively trying
to recruit staff for open positions – posted 2 full time positions for COVID
ESG – also had COC Rapid program that was awarded to CHR starting 7/1/2020 so
also hiring full time case manager for that position. Started interviews this
week. Andrea shared a form that is normally used for RRH (barriers) and
integrated questions from Fair Housing for equity into one combined form. Also
had a shared housing roommate form to get preference on roommate situation.
Form will be uploaded into HMIS. Do shelters have capacity to have these
clients fill these out for head start. Unaffiliated clients at hotels have been
assigned case managers. SPI has no issue to complete but uploading may be issue
due to technology – can’t do batch format and individually uploading all the
time may be issue. Completing surveys is possible. Need better technology for
uploading. YWCA thumbs up. Lisa will send out form to case managers and the
shared housing form.
5.
Agenda Items – 2 minutes
6.
Announcements – 2 minutes
a. Crane
– Housing Coordinator position will be available – if not state employee
already will need to go through background check – has to go through DCF –
process can take up to 8 weeks, person who does background checks also retired
so may be a lengthy process. Crane will send a job description – posting will
be available later.
