Home Making
In the effort to end homelessness, it has been my experience – generally speaking – that getting chronically homeless people into housing is the easy part. Providing the supports to help them stay there is the harder part. Here are a few tips that frontline workers can consider when supporting people in their apartment unit to help with the transition of a blank apartment into a place that feels like home.
Positive reinforce the housing choice.
On the day of move in, meet the person moving in at least one hour before you are supposed to meet the superintendent for getting the keys and moving in. One, this will reduce the likelihood of the person disappearing. Two, if you are even earlier than you said you would be when you show up at the encampment of shelter, you can tell the person that you are early because you are so excited about them moving in. Before they set foot at the building, take the time to engage in positive reinforcement. Let the genuinely know that you think this is a great step for them. Let’s say the apartment is downtown and that was one of the most important criteria in the housing search, reinforce how amazing it is that you were able to find a place that was close to downtown. Let’s say they wanted a smaller place so that it would be easier to clean, before you set foot in the unit talk about how glad you are that they found a smaller place so that it is easier to clean.
If we are sincere in our enthusiasm it is infectious. Our infectiousness will positively reinforce the housing choice that has been made.
Arrange furniture for the day of move in.
If you leave the apartment unit blank looking, it is going to feel more like a prison cell or place where they may have squatted than a place to call home.
Whether your organization has a budget to purchase new furniture or you rely on some great social purpose enterprises (I think of the likes of FIND in Edmonton), make sure that you arrange for the furniture delivery on the day of move-in.
A lot can be said for the new tenant having a say in the furniture that goes into their unit rather than them just being handed furniture that they had no say in. People who have a say in the couch, bed, coffee tables, etc are much more likely to take care of them long term.
While I have seen many a chronically homeless person be overcome with emotions on the day of move in when they get their keys, I have seen more actually break down and weep with joy when the furniture that they picked out arrives and they have a say in where it is set up in their place. Powerful.
Ensure basic needs are in place.
Sometimes this can be achieved as part of the furniture organization, but it is absolutely critical. On the day of move in, people need to have basic needs like toiletries, plates, linens, toilet paper, light bulbs, pots, cleaning supplies, basic spices, etc. If the basics aren’t in place, the individual will have to go elsewhere to have their basic needs met, which will make the place feel less like home.
In some communities I have seen church groups and high school students pull together “welcome home” kits that can be given to the person on the day of move in. It is one less thing to worry about, doesn’t take away from whatever meager income supports they may have, and ensures that the basics are taken care of.
Bring three picture frames.
If you go to a discount or dollar store you can pick up a few picture frames really inexpensively. Give them to the person on the day of move in as a moving in present. Tell them to fill each picture frame with something or someone that is important to them and display them in their apartment.
I have been amazed over the years at how many clients have taken this task seriously and used it to create a focal point in their new apartment. Yes, photographs are common for the frames, but I have also seen tenants create new artwork, put poetry or biblical quotes, press leaves and flowers, put in a small mirror, etc within the picture frames.
Like most of us, we decorate our homes with those things that we enjoy…that represent us…that bring joy to our lives. The picture frames help with this journey.
Bake cookies on the next visit.
A bit schmaltzy, but I think nothing says home like the scent of fresh baked cookies. Plus the time that the cookies are baking provides you the opportunity for engaged discussion with your client. And, if you get an inexpensive cookie sheet it is one more thing they have for their kitchen for cooking in the future.
As an approach to creating bookends, I have also been known to encourage cookie making when the support relationship hits significant milestones or the individual is ready to move on from the program.
Bring a small plant one week after move in.
One of the things I love about Ikea and similar stores is that you can get some indoor plants for super-duper cheap. It doesn’t break the bank to give a newly housed person a $1 plant. It is a good home-making gift.
A few things that I have seen that come out of having a plant – the client talks to their plant; the client cares for the plant; the client is exposed to sunlight because the plant is in a windowsill. I have heard many stories of plants from childhood.
Go grocery shopping within the first week together and make a stew or chili.
A quick way to assess the skill level in budgeting and shopping while also promoting food security is to go grocery shopping. This is usually a longer visit where you can get to know the client better. It allows you to interact with the client in a range of settings. You also get a sense of whether there are any things missing in the basic supplies provided.
Yes, stews and chilis are simple meals. But they are also quite healthy and cost effective. Plus, freezing single portions helps with budgeting food and resources throughout the month. I also think a well stocked freezer is a sign of a place being lived in, and removes worries that clients are going hungry for no reason.
Get a dry erase marker.
Credit where credit is due, this one comes from my buddy Kathy who is one of the most creative case managers I have ever met who has since gone on to become a program supervisor of a Permanent Supportive Housing building.
With the dry erase marker you can write reminders on the fridge (assuming it is one of those glossy white ones…practice in a discrete place first). Things like next home visits, doctor visits, important phone numbers, etc can all be written write on the fridge in one place. Genius.
Give them a calendar.
I have seen some agencies create calendars of their clients with important community phone numbers, but you don’t need to get that creative. Regardless of when the person moves in throughout the year, make sure they have a calendar. In one place in the apartment they can keep track of all appointments, the date, etc. It isn’t a bad idea to put a pen or pencil on a string and attach it to the calendar.
Create a personal guest policy.
I created this one early on in my career. I found I was frustrated if a superintendent or landlord tried to lay out the rules for visitors that were quickly broken and an eviction seemed imminent. Me telling people the rules also seemed to fly in the face of client-centred strategies that I really believed in.
So, very soon after move in I asked clients to create their personal guest policy. This was the client putting into their own words when they thought it would be ideal for them to have guests over, what they thought would be acceptable activities when guests were over, if there were any guests that they did not want over under certain conditions, and what actions they would take if the guest policy wasn’t followed.
The guest policy was never 100% successful, but it did offer something tangible to work off of when there were issues with guests. I could ask questions like “So what part of your guest policy do you think needs to be reconsidered or changed in light of…”
Some clients over the years posted their guest policy in a very visible place that others could see when they came to visit. Cool idea.
Roll up your sleeves to teach skills.
It is naïve to think all chronically homeless people we serve have all of the skills necessary to maintain housing; while at the same time it is unfortunate that some housing workers think they have no skills.
We need to start from positions of strength, and it is really only in spending time with our clients that we fully appreciate what they are capable and incapable of. It is my contention that we need to be willing to roll up our sleeves and actively engage in teaching these skills. Being a successful housing worker means that we have to be prepared to do laundry with people, clean up an apartment with people, scrub showers and toilets with people, go grocery shopping with people, etc. There is generally no other support in the community ready to do those things. Plus, if we see our role as promoting stability in housing first and foremost, we are on the front lines of making that skill development possible. We do with people, not for people, and over time see the skills transfer to the client in their pathway to greater self-sufficiency.
Bring some putty that can be used for hanging posters, pictures, etc.
You don’t want to put a bunch of holes in the apartment walls and the putty is rather inexpensive. If you give the putty to the person on or shortly after the day of move in and encourage them to put things up on their walls, it can take very little time to see the place transform into a decorative space. Whether it is newspaper clippings, artwork, posters, baseball cards or whatever, the individual is transforming the wall space into their own home without damaging the apartment. Plus, as because we want people to be engaged in meaningful daily activities, this type of opportunity is a great way to have people engaged in the activities of home making.
Conduct home visits on time for the length of time you said you would in the early weeks.
The last tip is to conduct home visits more frequently and usually for a greater length of time shortly after a person has moved into their apartment. This helps reinforce in the home making process that you have a vested interest in their success. It also lets you quickly catch any issues that may compromise wellness in housing in the early days. Adjusting strategy then can be critical for long term success.
It is my contention – and affirmed by people that I have supported in making the transition from chronic homelessness to housing – that the more an apartment feels like home the less the likelihood of damage to the apartment and the greater the likelihood that the person/family will stay there long term and be satisfied with housing. It also reinforces the need to focus on housing choices rather than housing placements, which are also proven to result in better long-term housing outcomes.
If you have great ideas on how to help create home, put them in the comments section of the blog below so that others can read them and borrow from your wisdom.
You Are Awesome – The Making of a Video Tribute
On July 5, 2012 we released a video tribute to all those housing workers that are working tirelessly to end homelessness. The making of the tribute is the focus of this blog and a lesson in how leveraging social networks can help define the message.
Since January I have been taking 5-10 second clips of video on my iPhone in various locations throughout North America. Anytime I saw a word or phrase or image that I liked, I recorded it. I didn’t know how it would possibly be used. I just kept shooting. I ended up with over an hour of material. That’s a lot when you consider that each clip is very short.
About a month ago, I started the experimental phase of the project. I selected three people in various areas of North America that were friends of mine on Facebook. I asked each one, using only social media, to find out which phrases they had heard me say in speeches I had given in their community really resonated with people in their social network. A couple of points here: none of the “friends” I asked via Facebook were close friends in the more conventional sense; and, I knew full well that not everyone in their social network would have heard me speak. Anyway, through this process the text phrases that appear in the video were selected. The only thing I added was the “You are awesome” tag at the end of each one.
I record many of the speeches that I give as part of keynotes or training or lectures or briefings to elected officials. I do this so that I can learn how to make my public presentations better. This is an important back-story for the next part of the exercise. Sending a direct message to 7 other friends on Facebook, I asked them to work their friend list to isolate parts of speeches that they have heard me give that they thought were particularly impactful. I then assembled audio clips from their feedback. Because I had given more than one speech in some of these communities, there are actually pieces of 9 different speeches included in the video. Some parts of those speeches are in the foreground. However, if you listen really closely to the mix (especially with headphones on) you are hear parts of other speeches in the background.
The last piece of the spoken word component was for me to send a message out on Facebook to everyone on my friend list, and a note on Twitter, asking people to audio record “You are awesome” in any way that they wanted to and to email it to me. I also asked people to have people in their family do it as well if they wanted to do so. Almost 10% of everyone on my friend list did so. Every single one of these is in the final compilation. Some are louder than others. Some are more frequent than others. But all of them are there. Who knows, maybe the quieter ones have a subliminal power?
I set myself a five minute limit for the tribute. The first thing I did was assemble the video images and text. If someone paid no attention to the audio, I still wanted the video to have its own key messages. The second thing I did was organize the sequence of the audio clips so that the messages in the foreground would sound like one continuous speech.
Feeling something was missing, I took some clips from an interview I did with a formerly homeless gentleman last year. I liked all of the background noise in the interview. I thought his eyes and other facial expressions were very emotive. The clips with him became the inspiration for the music composition.
Then I went about composing the music for the video. This was the most time consuming part of the project. In some ways it was like scoring a film…using music to help drive the emotional attributes of the video images. In some ways it was like putting together a music video…it had to work as a stand-alone piece of music. The toughest part was having a beat to work as a backbone, in line with the tempo of the speech pattern, and one that would “drive” people through the journey of the video.
And then I finally worked the “You are awesome” word messages into the mix at various times as part of the final editing process.
The whole video, audio and editing was completed in my “spare” time – late at night or on airplanes when I was too tired to read or write reports. Other than the music and “You are awesome” phrases, the whole video was created using existing materials that were put together in a new way. It was social media that assembled the crowd of people that had input on the phrases and text that resonated most with them in different communities. What I liked about this was that it provided a strong voice to how others have interpreted our work and messages rather than me providing solely a self-assessment. Some of the content recommended, honestly, is different than what I expected. For that I am grateful.
Once the video was posted on YouTube, I let people know via Facebook (personal page and corporate page) and Twitter. The fascinating – and unexpected part – in the first couple of days is that people in housing and homeless organizations started dedicating it to their staff or to each other. I also got direct messages relative to parts of the messages or the text that people wanted to know more about. All in all, it turned out to be a really interesting result.
As I write this, only a few days after the tribute release, it has already reached almost 300 views on YouTube. If the power laws of the internet are true, I suspect that this number will increase quite a bit in the coming months. I hope and trust more people on the frontline working their butts off to end homelessness see this and know how much that all of us at OrgCode admire the amazing work that they do. They truly are awesome.
You Are Awesome — A Video Tribute
View the video You Are Awesome —Dedicated to Housing Workers who Believe in Ending Homelessness
Ending homelessness is possible when there are awesome, professional people dedicated to the task.
This video is dedicated to those individuals.
These people inspire me and I hold them in high esteem.
… More to come detailing the video and the role that social media played in creating it.
Input from Persons with Lived Experience
I think it is critical in Human Service delivery that time is spent speaking with recipients of services and benefits to hear directly from them. In the projects we have done – from homeless counts that use surveys to developing long term affordable housing strategies; program evaluations to redesigning income benefits; strategic planning to developing plans to end homelessness – we fundamentally believe that the voice of the consumer must be heard in legitimate, defensible ways to inform and empower end users of services. The adage “Nothing about us without us” from the psychiatric survivor movement rings very true in our work.
Here are 12 tips to introduce/improve interactions with persons with lived experience in your work.
1. Have a research design.
You can’t gather this sort of input and use it responsibly if you have not sorted out the methods by which you are going to gather information and the ethics involved in having people with lived experience involved. Just going out to talk with people is insufficient. How, when, where, why, who and what is spoken about are all essential questions that need to be answered before you start talking to people.
2. Seek informed consent.
Just because someone has received a service from you doesn’t mean they have to talk to you. Same goes for someone who may be eligible for a service but has never accessed a service. People have to be able to provide informed consent to provide their input and for you to use it. It is ethically dubious to assume that just because you are serving someone or can serve someone that they are implicitly consenting for you to use their input.
3. Don’t talk down to people.
Persons with lived experience have unique subject matter expertise. Yet a lot of the time the people engaged with them speak down to them. If the questions, tone or situation for the conversation is in anyway condescending, you’ve got it all wrong.
4. Bring in outsiders.
The people engaged with consumers of your services (past or present) to get their input should be different than the people that they rely on for service on a day to day basis. Bring in a consultant, fellow agency, volunteers or staff from a different program area to get input from the people with lived experience. Otherwise if people even think there is an iota of possibility that what they tell you having an impact on the quality or quantity of service they receive, sunshine will be blown up your derriere.
5. Set the tone.
You can’t just feel people out or end up trying to be a chameleon who can “talk street” or act like someone you are not. It is up to the person getting input from persons with lived experience to set the tone for the conversation…what the conversation is about, how long the conversation will last, how the information will be used, etc.
6. Do something with what you hear.
If you really want people with lived experience to have a meaningful impact in how you deliver services then you must act upon the feedback and other information you receive. Asking for input but doing nothing about it essentially de-values the time and input of people with lived experience.
7. Empower people to have a say.
Honest feedback and input is necessary. People should be encouraged to be as open as they feel comfortable knowing in advance that there are not repercussions for being forthright.
8. Don’t limit responses to folks that are accustomed to participating.
Some communities “suffer” from the same people with lived experience repeatedly on the same types of advisory groups to provide the same type of feedback. While that is all well and good you can’t limit input to just these people. You have to find ways of engaging with those individuals unaware or unaccustomed to providing the sort of input being sought.
9. Be willing to go to places not usually associated with research/feedback.
Related to number 8 above, I have found it very interesting and helpful to go out of my way to get input. I have gotten better response rates and more honest responses, for example, standing in an underpass near a homeless shelter than at the homeless shelter itself. I have done better getting outreach vans to drop me off at encampments and pick me up later than staying with me. I have strolled the streets and alleyways with people involved with sex work. I have stood in the foyer of public housing buildings. I have spent hours on a park bench in a neighborhood chatting to people who pass by. I have been out first thing in the morning as well as the middle of the night. If we want to honor the voice of people with lived experience it has to be about the places and times of day that make sense for them, not us.
10. Don’t confuse lived experience with expertise.
Just because someone has experienced, say, homelessness does not mean they are an expert on all matters of homelessness. There are some people who have never experienced homelessness that have a lot of expertise in homelessness. It is what the input is about that matters, not that all input is of expert caliber. Let me give you an example…I have had my appendix out and my gall bladder out, and I have broken my hip. I would consider myself to have some expertise in describing the pain, approach to getting care and how to be rehabilitated afterwards for any of these three conditions. However, I would not consider myself to have the expertise to prescribe pain medication, conduct the surgery, insert pins into a person’s bones or outline an appropriate meal plan or exercise schedule.
11. Gather the input on a scheduled basis.
Gather input when you say you will gather input from the people you generally intend to get input from. If the information collection from people with lived experience is seen as haphazard more than intentional you may not get the sort of rigorous feedback that you will benefit most from through the experience.
12. Don’t underestimate access to technology.
I now find it comical when service providers tell me not to use Twitter or Facebook or Survey Monkey or similar tools to get input from people who are homeless or experience precarious housing or poverty. Why? Because I tend to get response rates much higher than one might expect from the general population. Economically poor and homeless people tend to have considerable access to technology and wherewithal to use it. Avoiding these opportunities is grossly limiting a source for gathering input.
I hope some of these tips will help you in your work and improve your services.
Generating Data is Outstripping our Ability to Interpret It
I was reading a newspaper article the other day about it now being possible to create the genetic map of an unborn child. Fascinating stuff. But there was one line in the article that really got me thinking about data more than genetics itself: “The capacity of genomics to generate data is outstripping our ability to interpret it in useful ways.”
I don’t think this phenomenon is limited to genomics. I can think of lots of fields and industries and individual organizations that place a premium on collecting data but do not have the ability to interpret it in useful ways.
Some errors that drive me around the bend:
Data for data’s sake. I have encountered too many organizations where they jumped on the data bandwagon and collected oodles of info that they never use. They devote loads of time to data for data sake without doing anything with the data. Data should drive decisions and program improvements.
Feeling. I once had a boss that used gut check and nothing else to see if he could use the data to tell the story he wanted to tell. Ugh. If ever the data collided with his world view he would either want to bury the data, have us re-run the analysis (which came up with the same conclusions time and again) or would challenge the methods of data collection (there was nothing wrong with the collection methods). We cannot shy away from data when it tells us something different than what we were expecting or wanted to hear. Data won’t always tell you that you are doing an awesome job.
Incorrect language. This is a well-intentioned error, but a common one all the same. People who don’t use data a lot will use words like “significant” or “sample” in ways that mean something completely different to data nerds and analysts than what they were intending. The result? People question their findings because of the incorrect language use. We could also get into incorrect manipulation of data (like averaging averages) but I won’t go there.
Data analysis plan after the fact. Good scientific and defensible analysis of data requires us to have a good plan for how the data will be looked at before launching into the analysis of the data. Otherwise there can always be the accusation that the data analysis set up after the fact was done in such a way so as to bias the findings.
People without any training drawing conclusions. Data analysis isn’t something that just anyone can do without proper training. We need to be infusing instruction on how to interpret data and take action upon it at the frontline and supervisory levels if we want organizations to use it properly. Oh, and Boards and Funders and Government too where there seems to be no shortage of people who have no clue how to read and interpret data and yet make huge decisions based upon the data.
But it isn’t just about interpretation or the common errors noted above. One major problem is that in many instances the data driven mentality has resulted in groups collecting way more data than they need (or at least trying to collect). A few things that happen as a result:
Incomplete data sets. Hiring an outside expert to make sense of your data when the data sets are largely incomplete will not result in robust findings. Without some key fields filled in within your data system it is sometimes possible to make inferences and use proxy data, but it is not as reliable. We need staff to feel that data entry is part of the real work that they do – not something that happens after the real work is done.
Constantly tweaking data asks. I could throttle (as I’m sure some service providers could as well) senior managers or funders that keep changing what data they want. Doing a file crawl or file audit to try and track down various pieces of data is not only inefficient, it is problematic by way of accuracy in many instances. Data asks should only be altered at the start of a funding year and should only be changed from one year to the next when there is a compelling reason to do so.
Insufficient infrastructure to support analysis. And then there are times when service providers collect all of the data requested and send it to their funder. I have lost count of the number of times there are not enough staff with the Funder to pull the data together across the agencies, undertake the necessary quality assurance analysis on the data, analyze the data appropriately and report back out on the data. It goes into a black hole. Tragic.
So if you want to make the best use of the data collection and analysis in the environment you work in, ask yourself these questions:
Do we correctly capture the information we need to know if we are meeting our stated objectives? Yes, the data collected should be directly linked to the objectives of your activities. Do not collect more than you need to. Keep it simple. And here is a tip – pull together a small group of people who do the work on the frontlines to help define the data to be collected relative to the objectives. They are a great barometer on what is helpful and what is crap.
Do we have a plan for analyzing this information in regular intervals? Set out an analysis and reporting out schedule in advance. Don’t get too ambitious. Figure out what needs to be shared internally and what should be shared externally, how and when. Once you have the plan, stick to it. If you let it slide it is amazing how complacent the organization will be about data and reporting out.
What do we do as a result of this information? This isn’t data collection and analysis just because a funder told you had to in order to get the money. You need to get into a mindset that if you collect only the data you need you should be able to reflect on service delivery and make it better.
How can we do this better? Take a step back once every 6-12 months and ask yourselves how you can collect and use data better. You may find that this is the key to decreasing the amount of data that you collect and doing more meaningful things with the data you do have to improve programming and service outputs and outcomes.
For the umpteenth time, Iain will be presenting Data and Performance Simplified at the National Alliance to End Homelessness Conference in Washington, DC this July – and he is happy to do so. Stay tuned to see the presentation on the Alliance website shortly after the conference.
POST HOC ERGO PROPTER HOC
Welcome to today’s Latin lesson. “Post hoc ergo propter hoc” means “after it, therefore because of it”. It is the title of a West Wing episode from Season 1 (and you can watch the scene herewhere it is discussed). It also happens to be the sort of thing they teach you if you study logic and comes in handy if you love data and helping organizations improve services.
In a nutshell, you can write up the formula like this:
X happened, then Y happened
Therefore, X caused Y
You can also have people reverse elements of the equation. Let’s say it really sucks for Y to happen. In that case, if you avoid or prevent X then Y won’t occur.
If you look just at the order of events rather than the influences on the events you can draw oodles of false conclusions. A temporal succession of events is not evidence of a causal relation. Does a rooster raising a cacophony just before the sun rises cause the sun to rise?
A lot of times when engaged with people, there is a reliance on anecdotes to explain causation rather than examining influences independently. The problem with anecdotes (amongst many) is that they are open to subjective interpretation, have the bias of the anecdote teller, rely considerably on intuition and frequently ask the listener to believe based upon the existing relationship between anecdote-teller and anecdote-listener rather than facts.
For those of you who love to support or play sports, you know that there is a lot of superstitions that occur which fall victim to post hoc ergo propter hoc thinking. As a species we are in search for meaning. We use superstition to sometimes create explanations for things simply rather than looking at other factors that may have had an influence. Was it really putting on the yellow headband before the tennis match that made her win? Maybe it was that the headband kept the hair out of her eyes. Or maybe it was nothing to do with her headband…that her opponent was under the weather…or that she had trained hard on her serve and footwork…or the match started with the wind at her back…and so on. To state that putting on the yellow headband before the match that she won caused her to win the match just doesn’t cut it.
Key messaging from a public relations perspective frequently falls victim to post hoc ergo propter hoc thinking. In one community recently I heard the following statement from a local elected official, “Since 2002 when we opened the [name of facility withheld] homelessness has dropped 11.78%.”
It begs a lot of questions. What has happened in the local economy over the same period of time? The community was at double digits of unemployment when the facility opened but steadily declined even through the recession. What about the more steady and rapid decline in homelessness after the 10 Year Plan and new programming were introduced in 2007? What about the investments in professional development for staff in the community to the tune of almost $200,000 in the past three years to learn better strategies to help people access and maintain housing? What about the availability of more rent subsidies available since 2008? So, did the facility opening cause the drop in homelessness? It may be part of the equation depending on who the facility caters to and the programs operated out of the facility, but unless you look at the whole picture you can’t say that the drop in homelessness after the facility being opened caused the drop in homelessness. (And as an aside, always exercise caution in Human Services data analysis which goes to a second decimal place…people are trying to baffle you with precision when the precision is not warranted given the margin of error accepted and expected in this type of analysis and research.)
And let’s take a moment to examine the reverse of the formula…that if you prevent X from happening then Y won’t happen. Complex social issues tend to have more than one factor that needs to be considered. For example, homelessness is rarely caused by one event…it is the manifestation of several events over time (where sequence may be irrelevant) that destabilizes housing or the confluence of multiple factors during a single event. A reduction of focus to just one factor tries to over-simplify prevention activities and will likely result in more anecdotes than proof when trying to explain your efforts to prevent homelessness. (Look at this another way – we know lots about risk factors for homelessness and prevalent characteristics of chronically homeless people and families, yet to this day do not have a full-proof way of preventing homelessness because the cause and effect cannot be easily traced and applied to the unique circumstances of different households.)
In Human Services in particular – although applicable to any organization with inter-personal interaction – I strongly urge people to look for meaning and explanation beyond just the sequence of events. Dig deeper. Look at context. Examine a range of rational factors that may have had an influence. Then draw together the plausible narrative of why things are the way that they are.