One Family has taken the lead on scheduling a Regional Peer Network Learning Session for 4-5 participants from each network, including the network coordinator.  This meeting is scheduled for all day September 10, in Shrewsbury.

Hello friends and colleagues,

 In an ongoing effort to provide real time data as to what is happening on a daily basis in the family emergency shelter system, I am sharing this week-ending aggregated report that identifies number of entries by office and reasons for homelessness.  This will inform you as to what is occurring in your local region and assist in your efforts to help families and the Division of Housing Stabilization to prevent and end homelessness. 

We are able to roll up these reports to show weekly and monthly data but the true impact to families is observed on a daily basis.  Obviously, this underscores the need for coordinated diversion and rapid rehousing.  We continue to see growing numbers entering our system but the movement from the family shelter system into housing is very slow to state the obvious.  This of course is the focus of our ongoing work.

 Thank you for your ongoing concern.  Bob

The overall picture is that the motel number of families increased last week from 836 on Monday to 863 on Friday, a staewide increase of 27 families in one week.

In Western Mass, all new families entered through the Holyoke and Springfield offices: 16 from Holyoke and 14 from Springfield.  (The Holyoke and Springfield offices are the only offices in Hampden County; the next nearest office is Greenfield–so these numbers do not necessarily mean that all these families became homeless in these two cities.)

A little context for these local numbers:  fairly recently, Yasmin Otero (from DTA) calculated that, over the past several months, the average number of families from our region entering shelter each month has been 28-30.  Bob’s number indicate that 30 families in our region entered last week.  The numbers certainly create a sense of urgency for me!

In our region, the reasons for homelessness last week were: 7 families asked to leave private market housing; 9 families asked to leave subsidized housing; 2 families due to domeastic violence; 1 family for health & safety reasons; 2 families evicted for nonpayment of rent; 1 family left an overcrowded situation; and 8 families reported on the first day of the week, before the report tallied reasons for homelessness.

The ICHH evaluation team wants to meet with the Leadership Council, the Convening Agency, the Network Coordinator, and members of the network that are working on Individual and Family initiatives.  This will be the funded providers (we should know who they are by this date) and the workgroups that have come together under Dave Modzelewski (for individuals) and Yasmin Otero (for families).

 Please hold the date available if you plan to participate.   The site visit team has provided the following information regarding the visit:

 Members of the ICHH Site Visit Team including Madeleine Taylor, Sue Beaton, Emily Cohen, Jennifer Fries, Joe Finn and Christine Araujo look forward to meeting with you and other members of your Network to get an updated picture of Network plans and progress.

 To help you prepare for the site visit, here is a list of topics and questions that we anticipate covering in the site visit meetings:

•  General update with Convening Agency and other key Leadership Council members on Network plans, priorities, and anticipated factors for success.   
• Focus on network organizing with key Leadership Council members, including Convening Agency and Network coordinator:
  • Network Structure and Composition.
    • Confirm connections in baseline Network map: Who’s connected to whom for what purpose?
    • What are challenges/facilitating factors in bringing together Network members in this way? Anticipated changes or adjustments
  • Network Governance: 
    • What are the Network’s decision making bodies, processes and decisions thus far?
    • What are challenges/facilitating factors, anticipated changes or adjustment
  • Network Management (Coordination, Communications)
    • What are current arrangements for Network coordination and communications (internal and external)?
    • What has been the Network’s experience to date?
    • Challenges/facilitating factors, anticipated changes or adjustments?
  • Network Health
    • What is the Network doing to build and strengthen connections between members?
    • What additional resources /connections has the Network leveraged, if any?
    • What are challenges/facilitating factors, anticipated changes or adjustments
• Focus on Family Innovations with family-focused sub-committee
  • Family Innovation questions will focus on the details of service provision in prevention, diversion and rapid re-housing
  • Staff structure
  • Policies and procedures for service delivery
  • What are challenges/facilitating factors, anticipated changes or adjustments?
•  Focus on Individual Innovations with individual-focused sub-committee
  • Your understanding of Housing First and low-threshold housing
  • Your use of the tier structure and program targeting
  • Your definition of chronic homelessness and programs targeting this population
  • Prioritization
  • Data
  • Service delivery models
  • What are challenges/facilitating factors, anticipated changes or adjustments?

In addition, we hope to schedule time during the site visit to go over what information the Network should be gathering on an on-going basis to ensure that a record of progress is available to share with other Networks, with ICHH, and the Site Visit Team.  The Network Coordinator and Convening Agency will need to participate in this portion of the discussion. 

If time allows, we will also provide technical assistance during the site visit related to network organizing, individual innovations, family innovations, and information management for the evaluation. If your Network has specific questions you would like to address in any of these areas, please forward them to the Site Visit Team no less than a week in advance of your scheduled visit.

Dear ICHH Network Conveners and Coordinators,

As you all know evaluation is an important aspect of the ICHH Network pilots.  We have a tremendous opportunity to change the way homelessness is addressed in Massachusetts and we must document the successes and challenges of this pilot.

To that end, a group of network and innovation evaluators will be making visits out to the regions throughout July to conduct baseline site visits and to gather information on your\Network structure and your programmatic innovations for both families and individuals.  This team will be led by Madeleine Taylor of Arbor Consulting Partners and will include representatives from the Department of Housing and Community Development, the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, One Family Inc, and the Fireman Foundation.

The goal of the baseline site visit in July is to get an updated picture of network plans and progress to date with a focus on family innovations, individual innovations, and network organizing.  In addition to collecting information on network organizing and innovation, the team may be able to provide some technical assistance at that time.   

These site visits will likely take a day to complete, with a meeting between the evaluation team and key members of the Leadership Councils in the morning and meetings with a family focused subcommittee, an individual focused subcommittee, and with the network coordinator in the afternoon.   The Network Coordinator or lead convener is responsible for ensuring that the key players from their region attend this session.

 In the first week of July, Madeleine Taylor will be contacting each convener/coordinator to schedule a 30 minute pre-visit phone call that will enable her to develop network maps for each region.  These maps will be the basis for on-going documentation of network evolution.

 The evaluation team has several dates reserved to conduct these visits throughout July.  Emily Cohen from One Family, Inc. will be contacting you to schedule these sessions shortly. 

Prior to the site visit we will be sending you a list of topics and questions for you to use in preparation for your site visit and to ensure that the appropriate network members are present for the session.

John O’Brien, Regional Director of the US Interagency Council on Homelessness, joined us to speak about our work in the context of what is happening in the nation and in the state of Massachusetts.  The minutes include a detailed summary of his comments.  He also handed out several studies, attached: Home & Healthy for Good, Progress Report, 2009; Cost of Rural Homelessness (Maine, 2009); and Home to Stay: Helping Families Avoid or Recover from Homelessness in Maine\’s Rural Areas (2009).

In moving forward, we are establishing work groups to meet between Council meetings.  These groups will be open to the public, and network members are especially urged to join; you can indicate your interest in participating in the comments.  The groups, their responsibilities, and Leadership Council members are:

1. Coordinated Service Delivery: Evaluate RFP responses and choose providers; and work with Regional Coordinator and WMIC to improve provider and government agency communication, coordination and relationships throughout region. Yasmin Otero, Liz Sullivan, Paul Bailey, Peg Keller, Gerry McCafferty
2. Performance Measurement: Oversee hiring of Data Analyst; and work with Data Analyst to collect data, produce data reports, and monitor grant performance and impact.  Tim Brennan, Dave Christopolis, Lori Ingraham, Charlie Knight
3. Community Engagement: Work with Regional Coordinator to create and implement public information strategy; form consumer advisory council; and work with Fr. Stan Aksamit to oversee faith community initiative.  Andrew Baker, Bob Fleischner, David Gadaire, Mayor Sullivan, Paul Bailey, Lynne Wallace
4. Leadership Council Membership Ad hoc workgroup to assess Leadership Council needs and invite new members as needed. Evan Dobelle, Martin Chaisson, Jane Sanders, Peg Keller, Michael Konig, Steve Como, Lynne Wallace

The next Leadership Council meeting will be September 30, 2009, 10 am to 1 pm, at Westfield State College.  Meetings are open to the public.

The session is designed to provide participants with an overview of the Department’s reentry continuum, promote the exchange of ideas and enhance existing collaborations. Our goals are to continue to improve the system for effective offender reentry, to achieve better public safety outcomes and increase access to resources for ex-offenders returning to the community. 

If you want to attend this meeting for our network, please indicate your interest in the comments.  If more than two people are interested in attending, we can determine who will go at Friday’s WMIC meeting.

Key topics for this month’s meeting are updates regarding our work;  review of grant deliverables and our plan for achieving them; a report from Janice Elliot about her study of barriers to creation of supportive housing in our region; and discussion of a regional conference or retreat in September.  Click to see the full agenda.

Hello all,

As we have now executed contracts, I am processing initial payments to each region, which you will be receiving shortly. The paperwork for these payments will be processed by DHCD next week.  As stated in the contract, the initial payment amount is 25% of the direct client allocations or line B on your contract budget.  You will also be able to begin invoicing and we will be providing additional detail on this process soon. 

 So now that we have lift-off, I need to provide the community and general public with information about how folks in need of services may access your network.  I know that each network has proposed new coordinated “client access points.”  These are the names titles, telephone numbers, emails, etc. that I would like to make available asap not only from the Commonwealth but out to your region as well.  Providing this info in a planned and thoughtful way will meet our goal of being transparent and accessible — so this a big first step. 

 I know you understand that when these calls are answered we expect an approach that attempts to provide the right resource at the right time.  Our “no wrong door” strategy is now becoming operational.  I understand that we must provide the necessary preparation and training for those on the front line and all who are involved in this roll out.  So, I want to be sure that you are ready with a clear message that your network is fully present and ready to connect families and individuals with appropriate resources. 

 As we have discussed, historically many who seek assistance are routed to many doors — often unsuccessfully — to get help.  Our mission is a fresh attempt to do better by advising and counseling clients on how we can be of assistance and not how we cannot.  I know you understand this and are ready to go to work. 

 We could not do this system change work without your commitment and dedication so thank you for all you are doing to support this new vision. 

Please let me know if you have any questions. 

 Robert Pulster, Executive Director, Interagency Council on Housing and Homelessness

This is quick turn-around, so start getting the word out to anyone you know who might be interested!

• Updates re ICHH matters
• Feedback on initial drafts of RFPs for Individual Services and Family Assistance
• Other issues

See you there!