Steering Committee Meeting Minutes – October 18, 2011
In Attendance: Father Stan Aksamit, Our Lady of Peace Paris, Paul Gage, Berkshire CoC, Peg Keller, Three County CoC, Charlie Knight, concerned citizen, Andrea Miller, Center for Human Development, Bill Miller, Friends of the Homeless, Pamela Schwartz, network coordinator, Liz Sullivan, concerned citizen, Lynne Wallace, chair,Dietz&Co. Architects
II. Meeting Minutes Review: Add Lynne Wallace as attending to last meeting minutes. Liz Sullivan will provide governance update in upcoming meeting minutes.
Pamela will confirm meeting minutes’ acceptance by committee via email.
III. Reviewed prior committee meeting minutes. Discussed crisis in demand on EA/HomeBASE and the need for Network weigh-in on the issue.
IV. Budget Update: not available (from Sylvia and Lori)
Received audit and financial documentation from PVPC.
V. Update on recent resource developments (click here for hand-out – thanks to Andrea for providing!):
a. SAMHSA grant: concern around provision of housing units. Network will play liaison role between service and housing providers.
b. Fireman Foundation grant: Pamela provided update on 2 applicants, Donahue Institute and Marya Laroche (Berkshires experience). Meeting tomorrow with applicants to discuss partnership.
c. ICCH Funding ($5 million supplemental statewide): Bill shared in the meeting today’s news (via email) that said ICHH funds were not in the governor’s budget. Will confirm.
d. WMICs Critical Response Team Initiative – possible prospect of funding. Liz: Keep eye out for pilot project, unattached funds (a la REACH pilot program). Andrea: vision of partnership in rotation of team meetings – part of Network pitch. Bill raised prospect of Doreen Fadus’ proposal to Blue Cross/Blue Shield to serve high use patients – consider having Network be part of this. Need to consider facilitation of this effort
Will start posting WMIC minutes on blog.
VI. Strategic Planning Around Capacity
Andrea presented: need for reporting/data collection; other grant related activities, including reporting and grant writing; searching out grant opportunities. With the number of moving parts comes the need for performance measurement, monitoring – we need to track our progress, e.g., return to our monitoring that we did during ICHH, toward a measurement of outcomes (not just outputs).
Tie into USICHH – call to action to CoCs, 10 year planning efforts – to join “Opening Doors Across America” campaign. May be a way for Network to connect to USICHH and to measure our performance consistent with USICHH. To join this effort, must commit to 4 steps:
- · Align your community with Opening Doors
- · Set targets and measure results
- · Act strategically
- · Partner in the national efforts to end homelessness
End all homelessness in 5 years; prevent and end vet homelessness in 5 years, prevent and end youth and family homelessness in 10 years; set a path toward ending all types of homelessness.
Father Stan: hard pressed to align with federal government in view of their failure to move anything.
Liz: However, this sets the frame for future funding, to work within bureaucracy to get outcome we want. These goals align with our mission.
Andrea: A way to structure our thinking, our work and a way to measure what we are accomplishing in accordance with national approach which will make us more competitive for funding applications.
Bill: USICHH has staying power across Administrations.
Paul: Berkshires would benefit from connecting with other CoCs to share and produce the data – support the whole region – one data person supporting the whole region would do a better job of supporting what we do.
Capacity building for Network:
Pamela: affirmed need for data, grant writing assistance
Housing resource development is key. Communications is key, e.g., website, educational opportunities, policy and advocacy. CT group – Partnership for Stronger Communities – is a good model for capitalizing on other funding to move their agendas.
Andrea: acknowledged no data/development committee. Could we recruit to that? Information and grant-seeking/writing can fit together. Building capacity around information, e.g, website, a white paper on the response to the tornado – technical capacity to be housed as a function, along with data and development.
Charlie: provided tornado info on website but struck by how people are still visiting website to see images, statistics – the market is there for that white paper.
Liz: grant writing/development – be careful to still use key members of LC for this purpose. Need to engage them in that group.
Father Stan: need to advocate to State: why are you betraying the vision that you believe in?
Peg: Sees advocacy as community engagement.
Peg: do we consider whether Pamela increases her hours?
Liz: should consider question of best structure for Network, separate from Pamela.
Andrea: our projects fit into USICHH headers – analyze where there are gaps, what do we need to fill them in.
In terms of hours, using Fireman Foundation as a model, 5-6 hours/week – staff for data collection, grant writing for one project per quarter.
Earlier, we identified work group called SAMHSA community practice – intention is to maximize other revenue streams in order to address institutionalizing best practices. Basis for using SAMHSA funds.
Bill: agrees with basic premise; makes a case for refining what data we’re collecting, cleaning it up
Consultant to produce deliverables.
Steering, Governance and Management – need to figure out relationships.
Align steering committee charge with stated functions.
Pamela will distribute job description to steering, seek approval by email, check with fiscal agent, bring to management team.
Meeting schedule: 3rd Tuesday, 3-5 pm, Nov. 15, December 20.
