Minutes of 5/3/10 Individual Services Committee Meeting
Attendees: Elaine Arsenault, CHD, Karon Belunas, ServiceNet, Yolanda Godard, Friends of the Homeless, Dave Havens, MHA, Jay Levy, Elliott-CHS Homeless Services, Bill Miller, Friends of the Homeless, David Modzelewski, DMH, Jerry Ray, MHA, Tony Pereira, Carson Center, Wanda Rolon, ServiceNet, Pamela Schwartz, Network, Suzanne Smith, Network, David Ware, Friends of the Homeless, Mark Warren, Brien Center
Review of ICHH Quarterly Report: we discussed the need to account for those individuals served beyond the REACH program but housed through collaboration at sub-regional meetings; also need to account for those who have left housing but are still getting services and part of REACH
Must adapt monthly report to include individuals served as outlined above, along with indivs housed without benefit of long-term supports or rental subsidies. Suzanne will follow-up with Jay and Dave to review monthly report forms and send out to others.
Discussion: discharge planning and referrals from shelter to shelter
Friends of the Homeless helped launch this discussion in the context of a referral they received from another shelter. FOH’s policy is to never turn people away and never consider themselves “at capacity,” which means FOH gets more problematic individuals and an over-crowded shelter.
This discussion led to the recognition that it would be beneficial to get shelter providers together with REACH providers to look at the overall system of sheltering and housing homeless individuals.
The Committee agreed to expand its scope to include ALL providers serving homeless individuals across the four counties, not just REACH providers. We acknowledged that our initial membership of ICHH funded grantees (i.e., REACH providers) was based on the need to establish systems and communication in our Network start-up mode. But now that we are established, we are ready to expand the Committee’s purview. We will do REACH program updates via email instead and reserve meeting time to tackle the larger policy and programmatic challenges facing individual homelessness across the region.
Pamela will contact each shelter provider in the region to invite them to our next meeting.
Next meeting: Monday, June 7th, 9:30-11:30, DMH Haskell Building, 1 Prince Street, Northampton
