Planning for Success throughout Phases of Housing Stability
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Part Nine: Planning for Success throughout Phases of Housing Stability
My pal (and Founding Partner of OrgCode), Dr. John Whitesell, has reinforced in me over the past dozen years the usefulness of the Sigmoid Curve to represent change, growth and development within people and organizations. He has also ingrained in me the ability to chunk the S-Curve into three main phases: Formative; Normative; and, Integrative.
While appreciating that everyone experiences housing support services somewhat differently, John and I meticulously went about trying to typologize various client characteristics in program phases relative to the S-Curve. Upon review of a whack of case files, interviews with staff in some highly successful housing programs, interviews with dozens of clients, mining of various data sets and reflecting on my own experience in creating and leading a rather successful housing program, we arrived at the following broad-stroke phases as experienced by the client, and as supported by the case manager:
The key is to use the understanding of stages of change and objective-based home visits to assist clients in moving through the program stages.
You may also have noticed reference to things like the Crisis Plan and the Exit Plan, as well as Risk Assessment. If you want copies of any of these sorts of documents, drop me a note atidejong@orgcode.com
And there are, of course, other tools and techniques that you can put into place through each phase of the program to help track progress and work on increased success. Some of my favorites (click on any of them if you want more information from the source documents) include:
If we plan for success, have a sense of what to expect along the journey of housing and life stability, support appropriately without coercion or misguided expectations, use tools & strategies to increase the likelihood of success and remain focused on the major outcome of helping people achieve greater independence over time, more success will be had.
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Iain De Jong has considerable experience helping organizations better understand how to support clients in moving from one phase to the other, and thinking about resource allocation and time management of staff in supporting clients in each of the phases. Feel free to drop him a line or ask questions idejong@orgcode.com
