Coordinated Entry Q+A

1.

Follow Up Question and Answer from “Moving Toward Coordinated Entry: Lessons
from Dayton/Montgomery County, OH” on June 9, 2011

Please note: The questions below only include questions that were not answered during the
webinar presentation. Questions came from webinar participants – answers came from the
featured speaker on the webinar, Joyce Probst MacAlpine.

Question: We have Service Point in an open/shared HMIS system - do you see being
able to use HMIS for referral if the system is open?
Answer: That is my understanding. In ServicePoint if our system was open all the users
could see the referrals because they are actually service transactions.

Question: What was the moving force that created the cooperation and willingness of all
agencies/organizations to develop and use the Front Door process?
Answer: This community has had a collaborative spirit for a long time, since before the
adoption of the Homeless Solutions 10 Year Plan in 2006. The Plan itself recommends
exploring the development of a single entry point. Through our Front Door Committee
that has been meeting since 2007 we have discussed many approaches to how to do this
so none of it was a surprise. We have included participating in the Front Door process in
our funding process for several years. Providers had a lot of input into the development
of the assessment tool, the referral process, the outcomes, and almost every step of the
Front Door process. Overall I think that people are willing to do this because we all
believe we will serve homeless families and individuals better through a process such as
this.

Question: On the drug testing policy. Is this just for emergency shelters or from
transitional housing or service enhanced affordable housing too?
Answer: There is no drug testing in our main emergency shelters. Some of the
programmatic shelters and transitional housing programs do drug test. Some of these
providers have changed the tests they use so they can see if there are declining levels of
substance in the urine. Most of our permanent supportive housing is on a Housing First
model that does not drug test.

Question: What happens to/with those people that refuse to go into shelter or programs,
prefer to live on the streets? We are in Florida, and it is possible to live on the streets or
in woods and eat at soup kitchens or street feeding that refuse to participate in anything

- and the mayors and business people want them off the streets.
Answer: We do not require that people enter shelter to receive services. We have a
PATH outreach program funded through SAMHSA that does outreach to people living
outside particularly people who are mentally ill. They can refer people to Safe Havens
and permanent supportive housing directly from the street. We do not have large
numbers of people outside, the one summer we did have a small camp we used a rapid
re-housing approach to house them.

Question: Front door is for all housing, not just shelter?
Answer: We consider our gateway shelters where people spend the first night they are
homeless and our street outreach program the ‘front doors’ to our system. The Front
Door Assessment process determines where people need to go after shelter to get the
services and support they need to be stably housed.

Question: Where did the money come from to pay for the consultants?
Answer: We are lucky to have local property tax dollars that paid for the consultants. I
think that the lack of money for planning and system capacity building is a big problem
in the current Continuum structure. Hopefully with HEARTH there will be more
resources to invest in projects like this.

Question: What is the average length of time a client waits for shelter placement? And
are you having problems with people not showing once referred to shelter?
Answer: We do not have a waiting list for shelter, our main shelter provider has a
mission commitment to sheltering and they serve everyone who asks for shelter
especially if it is their first time homeless or if they are a family. We do a have a problem
with people coming in and out of shelter so that they are not there when there is a
program or housing opening. We are tightening expectations so that when people enter
shelter they are told that they need to stay in shelter to get the services that are available
there.

Question: Why are long stayers a priority when there is substantial research on the
barriers they face to stay housed?
Answer: Most of the long stayers are being referred to Safe Haven or permanent
supportive housing so they go to housing with services to keep them housed. We have
had success with our PSH programs being able to serve these clients although it can be
challenging and we are working on new initiatives to keep them housed. From a length
of stay perspective we have to serve these people.

Question: Do referrals consider type of housing, such as group home vs. scattered site
apartments, for safety of homeless individual?
Answer: We have some single site programs in our Continuum but no real group homes
except one holdover ACF that got a small amount of Continuum funding a long time
ago. Our main consideration is whether people need on-site services to help them stay

stably housed. If the person is a safety risk to themselves or others we get our mental
health system involved.

Question: How many county staff are involved with working for the CoC with this as a
part of the CoC implementation?
Answer: We have five County staff working on the Homeless Solutions Plan
implementation – myself as Manager, a full-time Program Coordinator mainly focused
on housing and employment and contract monitoring, a three-quarter time Program
Coordinator mainly focused on the Continuum and HMIS analysis, a full-time HPRP
Program Coordinator whose position will end when HPRP ends, and a full-time HMIS
system administrator mainly focused on data quality, training and writing reports. We
all work on the Front Door process in some way, right now I spend the most time on it.
All together it does not equal 40 hours a week.

Question: How long are people typically on the wait list for housing? What do people
do while they're waiting?
Answer: We are working on getting this data out of HMIS. Mainly people are in shelter
while they wait for a referral. We have chosen to prioritize people in shelter and on the
street for any openings in programs even if the funding guidelines would allow the
program to serve people in other housing situations (ex. at imminent risk of
homelessness). Shelter case managers work on other housing exit strategies for people
while they are on a waiting list for a specific program type.

Question: What is the HMIS being used? Adsystech or some other vendor?
Answer: We use ServicePoint from Bowman Systems.

Question: How many shelters do you have in your area and how do you see this
working in a community with one family shelter and one pregnant women’s shelter?
Answer: We have a large shelter for single men, a large shelter for single women and
families who are served in separate areas, a runaway and homeless youth shelter, and a
domestic violence shelter. All of these programs are in our Continuum and enter data
into HMIS except the domestic violence shelter which is prohibited from entering data
into HMIS.I think you could do this for your family system with your current shelter set-
up. Not sure how homeless single men are served in your community but you could
adjust your approach to assessment to reach men outside or at meal sites.

Question: How do you maintain a waiting list for rapid re-Housing programs where the
mandatory exit from shelter is within 21 days of entry?
Answer: There is no waiting list for rapid re-housing, clients who are assessed as
appropriate for that housing exit are referred directly to the program. The rapid re-
housing program serves the client as quickly as their program resources allow.

Coordinated Entry Q+A

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