/ Funders Group

Funders Group Meeting Summary – Meeting held at Bellevue City HallNovember 3, 2014

Funders Group Present: / Funders Group absent:
Emily Leslie
John Okamoto / Sara Levin
Stephen Norman / Adrienne Quinn
Steve Walker / Arthur Sullivan
Andrew Lofton / Kathy Gerard
Others Present: Mark Putnam, Gretchen Bruce, Declan Wynn, Janet Salm, Tracy Hilliard, Jason Johnson, Lauren McGowan, Vince Matulionis, Debbi Knowles, Michelle Valdez, Nick Codd, Margaret Webb, Kristin Winkel

Family Housing Connections – Insights and Recommendations from Focus Strategies

The Families Initiative retained Focus Strategies (Katharine Gale and Megan Kurteff Schatz) as consultants to evaluate and offer recommendations to improving Family Housing Connections. Mark noted that CEH has the role of convening partners to plan for our community’s homeless response, while partners have the collective responsibility for implementation. The conversation today is intended to help funders understand how the FHC Coordinated Entry & Assessment (CE&A) system is operating in practice, how partners collectively and individually influence that, and how funders, collectively, can support system effectiveness. Focus Strategies scope of work included:

  • Analyze strengths, challenges, gaps in the FHC system.
  • Assess efficiency and costs
  • Engage stakeholders in evaluation and problem solving
  • Make recommendations to increase efficiency
  • Make recommendations for sustainability

The scope did not look at expansion of CE&A for SA, but did look to intersection. Focus Strategies will present a final report to the IAC in January.

Katherin recapped the typical client flow process from first call to 2-1-1 to ultimate housing placement. She found multiple inefficiencies, including significant lag times, redundancies in call backs and appointment settings, assessments, and selection for housing. The typical wait from first call by a family who is homeless until their referral to emergency shelter (or other housing option) is 100 days – though it is highly variable depending on the families ‘refer-ability’ (barriers/desirability as a tenant.) She shared specific information on the high variability among programs screening criteria noting that this alone creates delays, denials, refusals, and multiple loops – with the end result that only about 50% of client referrals result in a successful match to housing.

Her KEY FINDINGS:

  1. Referral and matching process is set up to fill units/openings, not to house people experiencing homelessness
  2. Assessment tool does not effectively triage or prioritize
  3. Assessment process lengthy and does not collect information needed to make matches
  4. Clients often lack documentation needed for housing and no one is tasked with helping them get it
  5. High and multiple screening criteria lead to many unsuccessful referrals, and some families receive no referrals
  6. Data system not integrated with HMIS, impacting accuracy, posing challenges with reporting and inability to automate matching function
  7. Lack of clarity about governance and decision-making process; many issues being worked out on a “one-off” basis

Good news – We could get to equilibrium (time between 1st call to placement = 30 days or less) IF we had more:

Diversion

More program slots

Higher turnover

90% referral success rate

Recommendations for Key Funder Actions

•Message system purpose, and require performance indicators that reflect system goal

•Drive standardization of screening criteria and support providers to dramatically reduce barriers

•Identify ways to reduce steps and streamline required paperwork for housing access

•Establish clear roles and accountability, including clear decision-making structure and monitoring results

•Participate in development of refined system design

•Commit to supporting key activities shown to be missing in current design

Funder discussed the findings, recommendations, next steps and came to agreement:

  • Our GOAL is to attain equilibrium in number of unsheltered families seeking housing and our available housing resources and meet HUD and Commerce requirements for Coordinated Entry and Assessment systems for all populations;
  • Our VALUE is to do so through a client-centered approach that puts families first;
  • We UNDERSTAND that mismatches between funding eligibility criteria and program requirements sometimes get in the way of families being approved for shelter and transitional housing; and
  • We want to ALSO UNDERSTAND the opportunities and challenges experienced by providers in applying these criteria;
  • We COMMIT to:
  • Working together to reduce and standardize eligibility criteria wherever possible to streamline the placement of homeless families in appropriate housing
  • Refining the FHC intake tool to collect the necessary information to make appropriate referrals
  • Providing clear communication among funders on roles, decisions and accountability

Respectfully Submitted, Gretchen Bruce

2-FG Summary 9-8-14