1.9 HPRP: Youth Strategies and Family Reunification (Strohminger)

NAEH Conference
Tuesday July 13, 2010
Nancy Strohminger
AIRS/ City Steps/Empire Homes of Maryland

Baltimore—A Poor City in a Very Rich State
Population: 637,000
Median Income: $40,087
Persons Below Poverty Level: 19.2%
STATEWIDE--
Population: 5,699,000
Median Income: $70,482
Persons Below Poverty Level: 8.2%

Emphasis on Adult and Chronic Homeless
Shelter capacity (adults)
Emergency shelter-- ~1000 beds
Transitional shelter-- ~1400 beds
Youth-specific shelter services
4 beds for runaway for youth under age 18
7 transitional housing beds for youth age 18-21
AIRS City Steps Youth Resource Center—Opened in mid-2008—the first to focus on homeless youth ages 16-24.

Baltimore Profile of Need
Extremely limited services (housing options or support services).
Little sense of need other than anecdotal. Without services, it is hard to count the need.
Youth are not accessing traditional adult services—see themselves as vulnerable in these locations.
Cities of comparable size estimate range of 1500—2000 homeless youth annually.

HPRP Project
OUR IDEA– Become the go-to place for service knowledge
Money for Service Navigators (3) to fan out as a Mobile Team connecting youth to known resources
Additional dollars for rental down payments, utility supports, emergency shelter, support of family units with 16 and 17 yr. olds.
Collect basic profile data to better illuminate their needs
Use the new counts to justify the needs for services (including housing)

Twin Goals
Support need for resources and policy change
Exposing the need and strengthening knowledge
Defining current resources and possible gaps
Provide services
Developed basic services manual specific to age
Use the housing and utility dollars as honey to draw out, identify and serve the need.
Understand the target population and their needs
Educate, assist and connect consumers to services

Intake and Documentation Process
Simple Intake with emphasis on basic demographics, and client signature.
Track zip code at point of contact.
More in-depth intake for those wanting housing, HPRP Prevention dollars, including Verification of homelessness, Income Verification for household.
Records are kept, but little traditional service planning

Approach
Be creative and flexible
Use our mobility to perform intakes anywhere
Use their tools of communication
All had personal cell phones with texting capabilities
Treat youth like non-clients
Have something tangible to offer.
Use traditional outlets to speak to providers.

What We Found
Hidden population of unstably housed couch surfer.
Extremely underserved—and unaware of available help
Transportation challenges enforce their isolation.
They call you when they need you, but not before or after.
They do not identify as “clients” or “homeless”
Distrust of programs, prefer to work outside the system, high failure rate in programs, education attempts.

Intakes by Zip Code
21217
21215
21218
-----------
Next 7
--------
All Others

Income Profile

Education/ Training Profile

Some Observations
Not everyone wants independent housing, but they do want and need assistance.
Most respond well to the “Call Charlie” approach
High percentage of women with young children
Highly mobile group—the folks who call this month fall off, and are replaced with a completely new set of callers.
About half are self referred or referred by a friend.

Their Challenges
Traditional cash assistance very difficult to get except if you have a child.
Most subsisting on the cash economy. 7 out of 10 using food stamps.
High percentages of debt from failed attempt at education, child support, providing barriers to workforce enhancement.
Their top 3 identified needs—housing, transportation, employment.

Did it Work?
272 unduplicated Intakes since Nov. 1, 2009 (Service Navigators point of hire).
Anticipate over 400 intakes/ year
Have hired youth to start taking the phone calls, with eventual goals of releasing some service navigator time to follow up on service connection verification.

The Effect of Service Navigators

Service Profile

Program Challenges
Cold weather exposed our problem with no emergency shelter.
The city’s voucher program used a vulnerability index that focused on cold weather exposure and did not identify “age” on the vulnerability spectrum.
Giving and getting the voucher to a young adult with no lease or apartment experience really exposed their lack of independent life skills.
No extra money for life skills or case management

Surprises
How well they responded to structure—as long as one found the half-step up from child expectation.
Intervention does not have to be long-term to be valuable
How readily we found suitable adult services in all areas of basic services in the city—often willing to serve this group when invited by the Service Navigators.
Some traditional clinical service providers enabled and forgave a lot of poor entry level behavior, rather than provide instruction.

For More Information
Nancy Strohminger
Executive Vice President, Programs
AIRS/City Steps/ Empire Homes of Maryland
410-576-5070 x12
nancy@airshome.org

1.9 HPRP: Youth Strategies and Family Reunification (Strohminger)

by National Alliance to End Homelessness

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1.9 HPRP: Youth Strategies and Family Reunification (Strohminger) Presentation Transcript