***SOLD OUT*** The Leadership Academy ***SOLD OUT***

**************SOLD OUT**************

Thank you everyone for your interest! This year’s Leadership Academy is SOLD OUT.

If you want to see what awesome stuff you will be missing you can continue to read below.

Thanks again to everyone who signed up and we will be seeing you in October.

Did you miss the opportunity to join this year’s event? Don’t fret just yet. We have a waiting list. If you want to get on the waiting list please send us your details at academy@wvceh.org .

From October 20-22, 2015, at the renowned Stonewall Resort in West Virginia, OrgCode is holding our first ever Leadership Academy on Ending Homelessness. This is a professional goal of mine come true, and I really hope you will attend. You can learn more about it by visiting the OrgCode website: www.orgcode.com

Why did we pull together the Leadership Academy?

One of the major barriers that comes up time and again in our travels is the matter of leadership. This takes many forms, from getting people to gel around a vision to dealing with fractured service responses; from competing understandings of goals to competition in funds and glory; from coaching elected officials to keeping staff going on the work. While we have given a lot of advice on this, we felt we could do a better job bringing people together.

And then there is the “loneliness at the top” phenomenon which is a real feeling. There are a lot of amazing folks out there that are so alone in their respective community that being the leader makes them a target. What they don’t know is that there are a lot of people JUST LIKE THEM in other cities – and even another country – that have the EXACT SAME EXPERIENCE that they do. We wanted to build a community of supports just for leaders.

Why did we decide on West Virginia?

If you only believe the stereotypes of West Virginia I can see your point. Here is the thing: West Virginia is AMAZING! They have natural beauty conducive to the sort of setting that will be helpful for leaders to think, reflect, connect and grow. We did NOT want a major urban location where people would scatter when we were not in session. We wanted a retreat type environment.

There is also the matter of the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness. They are helping with logistics and hosts given the academy occurs in their backyard. If you don’t know them, you should. They are change agents in their own right. Plus they are cool cats.

To deal with what may feel like isolation, I am toying with either doing stand up or putting on my musician persona and entertaining people each evening.

Is it worth the price?

In an alternate universe this conference is free and we can invite the people we want to have attend and someone else is going to pick up the tab. But that is not the world we live in. So, there is the matter of cost.

Let me be clear about this (because it has come up): NO ONE IS GETTING RICH OFF OF THIS GATHERING!

Let me be even more clear: THE PROFESSIONAL COSTS OF PUTTING THIS TOGETHER WILL LIKELY SURPASS THE AMOUNT OF MONEY COMING IN!

What will Iain De Jong or OrgCode make off of this? We hope not to lose too much. We hope to at least make the equivalent of our daily professional fees for the three days of the event. All the prep time will likely come at a loss. If it so happens we make some money, we will be sharing that with the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness to assist with their change efforts. As the hosts and organizers, they deserve to benefit for their efforts to make this event possible. If we do not make a cent we will still be really happy. I don’t know if you are familiar with one of our four business models: Great Consultants, Lousy Business People.

Also, it would be a mistake to not point out that if 4 or more people from the same organization there is a 25% discount, so long as you register before the end of May.

How did you come up with those topics for the agenda?

I threw darts at a dartboard. Whatever stuck we decided to offer. Kidding.

We focused on the things we thought would be the MOST helpful for leaders from all of our experience and travels. Does that mean every session is going to rock for every participant? We hope so. But I also note as an educator that some material will be more impactful than others depending on your experience and your local circumstances.

What you can count on is really good quality instruction and material. You can count on taking stuff and putting it into effect right away. And you can count on wit and sarcasm. Because, well, look who is leading it.

What does it mean when the promotional material says “Not a Monster Conference”?

We wanted a scale that made sense for networking and connectivity between participants. The format of the training and engagement when it is a room full of leaders is one that lends itself to discussion and reflection in groups. So for instructional reasons we did not want to make the logistics unwieldy or lose the magic of community that comes with a certain scale.

Our original goal was to have 40 people come. That target has been reached. Never in my wildest forecasts did I think we would hit that so soon. Sometimes I wondered if we would reach it at all. If the momentum continues as it has I anticipate shutting down registration if we get much higher than 200 people. I think the likelihood of that happening, though, is wicked small.

If I wanted to know more about how this all came about, who is leading it, or anything like that, where can I look?

We already thought of this. A few weeks ago we put out a backgrounder, which you can find here.

What Makes Good Street Outreach in the Era of Coordinated Entry?

Once upon a time, a person curled up like a question mark on the sidewalk resulted in our best guess of what should be done. With coordinated entry come opportunities to use data in different ways to better inform street outreach, and ensure integration with the rest of the homeless service delivery system.

Here are seven pointers to help you along the way:

1. Street outreach is not an entry level position

Most communities have two groups of people that are amongst those with the highest acuity: persons that have been in shelter for long periods of time, and persons that live outside and do not use shelter or only use shelter on seldom occasions. While it would seem obvious that your most acute persons experiencing homelessness would benefit from your best trained and most experienced personnel, time and again communities see outreach as an entry level position, or something that untrained peers can do. If you want to get highly acute persons integrated into your coordinated entry system, think through the staff you need doing outreach for this to get the desired outcome.

2. You must balance your priority list with new contacts

Street outreach is planned, strategic, and organized. It is not an activity of driving or walking around aimlessly happening upon homeless persons by chance. In a coordinated entry system, street outreach should know exactly which people they aim to connect with daily, for what purpose, and with a strong housing orientation. Three quarters or more of every shift should be spent with existing contacts and moving the housing process forward. Only about a quarter should be spent with new contacts. As for where the priority list comes from, this is most often determined through a Point in Time Count, or periodic population surveys done once every two or three months. Everyone on the priority list is known by name, acuity level, and location of where most commonly located. Mapping can be helpful, even if it is a simple pin drop on Google Maps. Along the way you will come to distinguish the difference between your anchors (same people in generally the same spot night after night) and your tumbleweeds (people that are genuinely drifting through, or more fluidly using shelters and other resources as well as outreach).

3. The same tool used for common assessment elsewhere in your community must be used in a mobile manner

There is not one triage or assessment tool used in shelters and housing programs, and a different one used through street outreach. Moreover, street outreach workers either need to have the skills and training to deliver the tool, or else assessment staff need to ride along with street outreach workers several times per week. Trying to have street outreach workers transport people to where an assessment can occur is an unnecessary barrier.

4. Balance outreach across different times of the day

Some street outreach has to occur during the day because that is when most government services and other service providers and housing providers are operating. However, it is a mistake to do outreach only during the day, as there is insufficient engagement with some of the most street involved and entrenched persons that are undetectable during daytime hours.

Some street outreach has to occur in the evening and nighttime because that is when most people living outside are bunking down or are engaged in nocturnal activities. However, it is a mistake to do outreach only during the evening or night, as there is insufficient connection to activities that can only happen during the day.

Some street outreach has to occur in the early morning hours and around the crack of dawn because that is when most persons that bunked down for the night are rising, and because some of the persons that were incapacitated because of their nocturnal activities are lucid (though perhaps feeling rough).

This does not mean your community has to have three street outreach teams. But it should result in different shifts from week to week to week in order to maximize coverage of times of day to connect with people to ensure maximum impact.

5. Don’t confuse building rapport with people liking you

Street outreach workers are effective when they build rapport through professional skills and the ability to deliver on what they offer: housing. Street outreach workers do not need to be chummy. They do not need to hand out cigarettes or sandwiches or coffee to engage and be effective. They need to have a clear offer of housing with appropriate follow through. Time and again we have seen it possible for an individual on the street to absolutely despise a street outreach worker and still get housed through their efforts.

6. Ensure a warm transfer to ongoing supports in housing

In a coordinated entry system the interface between the engagement point (streets) and the resolution of homelessness (housing) is wrought with cracks people can fall through. This is especially true when blind referrals are made (which is about telling people where to go and at which time and hoping it happens rather than actually accompanying people). Part of effective street outreach is ensuring there is a gradual, warm handoff to the longer term housing case manager. Street outreach workers should also visit people in their housing for the first few weeks after move-in to reinforce the transition and provide a support to the work being completed by the individual and the housing case manager.

7. Never drift away from a Housing First orientation in your approach

Street outreach must focus on getting people off the streets and into housing, without jumping through unnecessary hoops like attending programs, going to treatment, obtaining an income first, taking medications, demonstrating sobriety, or being assessed for housing readiness. Street outreach also needs to focus on ensuring there is movement into housing, not building dependency or enabling people to stay on the street. I am of the opinion that only the most rare of circumstances should survival gear like food, tarps, sleeping bags or the like be shared with persons living outdoors – and in some communities there is no place for this at all.

Street outreach workers, depending on the community, can be critical to a lot of the administrative work required for people to get housing. This can include things like getting identification for the person they are supporting, filling out paperwork for housing providers, collecting verification documentation, etc.

Street outreach workers are getting people to commit to a support program that comes with housing, not a housing program that comes with supports. Street outreach must never lead people to believe that there is an offer of housing only. This ensures that street outreach is effectively supporting the coordination process of ensuring long-term housing success for persons with higher acuity.

Confusion of Resources: Make Proven Practices Possible through Reinvestment

Invest in change. Spend on impact. (Re)Profile the resources in your community to meet needs. For many communities, this means figuring out how to fund rapid rehousing – or to scale up their rapid rehousing.

While not the case 100% of the time, those communities that struggle the most with figuring out how to make this happen are the ones that will not let go of anything they are currently doing – whether or not that is aligned with ending homelessness – and will entertain it if and only if they have new resources. Peel back the curtain, though, and you can often see opportunities to make rapid rehousing (and other things like expansion of PSH or housing-focused street outreach) if – and only if – the organization/community is brave enough and strategic enough to change what they have always done.

Let’s look at a few common examples:

• Scattered site transitional housing can be (relatively) easy to transform into a rapid rehousing program.

• Survival based street outreach that hands out socks, sleeping bags, tarps and the like would be better spent providing rapid rehousing directly from the street.

• Using homelessness and housing resources to fund substance use recovery programs (residential or otherwise), is essentially letting health and addiction funders off the hook, and misusing housing resources for treatment. Homelessness and housing resources could be spent on rapid rehousing. Yes, resources may be necessary for treatment, but don’t use your homelessness and housing resources to fund it.

• Extensive programming within shelters such life skills training, budgeting programs, socio-recreation programs, etc. are well intentioned but misplaced when in shelter. These resources would be better spent on rapid rehousing and providing these types of supports in community.

We do not provide services in an environment of unlimited resources. I have yet to find the community that feels they have more money or staff resources than they know what to do with, and therefore, need to make more intelligent and informed decisions on investing. Rapid rehousing is worth investing in. Don’t confuse where money has always been invested with where it should be invested.

The Unexpected (?) Kindness of People Experiencing Homelessness

Did you see the video where the kid is laying on the sidewalk and the only person to stop and offer warmth and comfort was a man that is homeless?

Did you read the news story where a woman that is homeless found a wallet – and returned it without taking any of the money or using the credit cards first?

Did you hear about the youth that is homeless that sang the song to the kid that was crying at the parade?

I like a feel-good, good-news story as much as the next person. What I cannot fathom is why the homelessness status of the individual is such a riveting point in the news story. It is as if people experiencing homelessness are incapable of being kind.

If you want to understand kindness, maybe you need to understand empathy first. I can share the feelings of another if I have felt those feelings myself. If homeless, it is natural empathy to provide warmth and comfort of another. It is natural empathy to return precious belongings of another if I, myself, have experienced things taken from me. It is natural empathy to help others find joy during periods of discomfort or frustration – as I long to feel the same.

People experiencing homelessness are – believe it or not news media outlets and sensational FaceBook status updaters – capable of the same range of emotions and housed people. You do not lose your capacity to have emotions when you experience homelessness. To think otherwise is to, perhaps implicitly, reinforce that if you are homeless you are an “other”…not someone’s mother, father, sister, brother, son, or daughter.

“In all my years of experience…”

Over the past decade the change movement in homeless services has been leaping forward exponentially. There is greater knowledge and acceptance of things like housing before treatment, coordinated entry, using assessment rather than subjective opinion, and overall, ending homelessness. But that does not mean there is always widespread acceptance. One of the greatest struggles in communities are those that have been set in their ways for decades that are unwilling or disinterested in new evidence or practices. This usually begins with a statement of “In all my years of experience…” followed by some explanation of why what is being suggested will not work.

Take, for example, a community I was working with in Florida. The Founder of a non-profit – now quite up in age – came to a meeting with CEOs and Executive Directors to hear me talk about changing homeless services towards a housing orientation rather than a treatment orientation. At the conclusion of my talk she chimed in with, “In all my years of experience people need to have their root issues like health issues and addiction issues dealt with before they can even think about going into housing.”

Or consider another example, from Central Canada when an older volunteer within a particular cultural group remarked, “I have been doing this type of work since long before you were born, sir, and I know for sure that unless the people in my community confront the evils of alcohol first they will never stay housed or build relationships that matter.”

Or one more example to ponder from a conference workshop I was giving in Michigan where the participant came up to me when the session was done and said, “That was the most exhilarating talk I have heard in a long time. It lit me on fire inside. But like all fires you have to be careful. Because you said some dangerous things about getting homeless people housed right away. There’s a reason we have shelters, son. They get people ready to succeed in the real world. Don’t forget that. I’ve been at this since the first shelter opened here. I know what works. In all my years of experience, no one in [insert name of city] would succeed doing what you talked about.”

So what is this all about?

First of all, we naturally equate longevity at an activity or job as success. It is entirely possible to be in the same profession for a long time and not be good at it. In fact, you could do it for a long time and be an uneducated fool. I would hope that is rare, but it is possible. And it may be more possible in the non-profit world or faith based organizations where people can confuse being well intentioned with being knowledgeable or effective.

Secondly, what is being presented is opinion. If it were informed opinion (evidence, data and scientific information combined with experience) these all may be very valuable contributions. However, they were essentially uninformed opinions (experience only – without the factual backbone) that was confusing their years of practice with evidence.

Thirdly, I would suggest that this is somewhat indicative of an industry that rarely embraces investment in ongoing professional development. Too often, citing the “we’re a poor non-profit” mantra, organizations fail to learn and misinterpret what they think with what they actually know.

Finally, I believe this can be indicative of a lack of oversight on the part of Boards of Directors. Each board should be satisfied that the organization they provide oversight to has the knowledge to do the work most effectively. Board Members should attend leading conferences on homelessness and housing, invite external speakers, and read published information on the subject. If they don’t, they may accept what they are told from the CEO or Executive Director as the absolute truth…when really it is absolute opinion.

Working to End Homelessness

oday’s guest blogger is Ali Ryder, a Planner with OrgCode Consulting.

This week, I had the privilege of being invited by the fine folks at Heartland Alliance to act as a coach at their Working to End Homelessness Innovation Workshop, part of their Connections Project.  It was a fantastic opportunity to meet with great people from across the country, who were all excited to try new innovative approaches to connect homeless people with employment!  I learned so much, but here are my top takeaways:

1. Everyone wants to break silos, but no one is 100% sure how to do it

A lot of project teams said that there were great housing programs in their community, and great employment programs in their community, but since they had different goals and funding streams, it was always identified as a challenge to get these programs to work together.

2. There are a lot more federal programs than people know about

Did you know that you can use Medicaid to help fund Permanent Supportive Housing?  Did you know that people on disability can work and still receive their benefits?  Did you know that there’s a program called the Family Self-Sufficiency program, operated by HUD that incentivizes low income families in RGI to increase their income without being penalized on rent, and that any housing providers (not just a housing authority) can implement the same program for their tenants?  Did you know that there’s a new HUD program called Jobs-Plus?  Or that there’s funding to help youth to expunge or seal their criminal records?  Or that HUD has a $15 million annual budget to provide technical assistance for communities?  I’m willing to bet you knew some of those, but not all!

3. “Collective Impact” is the new buzzword

“Collective Impact is the commitment of a group of actors from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem, using a structured form of collaboration (definition from Wikipedia).” Okay, maybe it’s not so new, but isn’t getting everyone to work together a good thing?

4. There’s a lot of talent out there

The Innovation Workshop was just the top 10 teams from across the country, and they all had great ideas!  I’m sure not jealous of the team at Heartland Alliance that has to figure out which ones are the best of the best.

5. Engaging the business sector can be done, but it requires thinking a certain way

If you’re trying to engage regular business people with your program, you need to make sure you speak their language.  Instead of asking them for a favor (“please, just give this guy/gal a chance!”), turn the tables.  How are you helping them?  Maybe they’re a landlord or employer with a high turnover rate, and they don’t want to go through yet another hunt for a new tenant/employee.  Tell them how you are helping them save time and effort.  And then follow through – it doesn’t work if you make a promise and don’t deliver.

6. The ending homelessness realm is actually pretty progressive

You might not believe me, but think about this.  There was a way we used to do things, and then a couple people started trying to do things differently.  They called it Housing First.  It worked really well.  Other people tried it.  It caught on.  The federal government is behind it.  There’s funding changes that support evidence-based and evidence-informed best practices.  The HEARTH act is referred to as a “game-changer.”  We know things about how you can get the biggest impact by focusing on persons with the highest needs.  We have assessment tools that efficiently help case managers know exactly what kind of intervention would be best for an individual.

In contrast, what is there for trying to connect a similar population for employment?  The very same innovators that attended this Workshop (who were more knowledgeable about employment programs than me) said that the system was backwards, encouraging programs to help people who were “job-ready” and easy to help.  And for those with higher needs, there was no tool to help service providers identify whether they would be good candidates for supported employment, job training, or something else entirely.

7. The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act is an opportunity

It’s a new piece of legislation that, among other things, requires states to develop new strategies, and look at the barriers of individual job seekers.  This is an opportunity for CoC leaders to get involved in the planning process, and have input on how to make better connections to employment programs.

8. There’s a lot of interest in a tool like the SPDAT, but with an employment focus

Maybe it’s something we should work on in the future.  What do you think?