The Time Seems Right: Let's Begin the End of the VI-SPDAT

Let's put the VI-SPDAT to rest…turn off the lights…bring it to an end.

Just not right away. Hear me out.

A pandemic can get a person to spend a lot of time in their own head when working from home. It has been a long time since I could think about the VI-SPDAT critically. And the more I think about it, the more I realize we can do better. I don't just mean OrgCode does better (we can). I mean we as a sector of passionate champions for ending homelessness can do better. And people experiencing homelessness deserve better.

Here are my ideas:

Let's create a tool or an approach framed through an equity lens. (Or if someone has already figured this out and it is working well, let's promote it!) I think we can open the creation of a tool/approach up to one large collaborative process that will take a couple of years. I don't have all the ideas of how to do this, and that's a good thing. We should see a new tool/approach as co-created with different expertise and opinions. So, let me throw this out there: to all the VI-SPDAT supporters and to all the VI-SPDAT haters: who wants to work together on something new and better? Who at least wants to meet to discuss what this could look like? Even if OrgCode gets it kicked off and then turns it over to others, that is fine. We can co-lead or take a back seat or sit back and just watch it happen from afar. We have learned a lot (and have a lot of scars) that may be helpful, but I don't want to taint or interfere with a process either. If anyone is on board with at least figuring out what this might look like, send me an email to express your interest. I will take responsibility for convening a structured online gathering (or several) to get the ball rolling.

Or maybe there is already a group doing everything outlined above, and I am just out of the loop. If you are, I think it's a great thing. And I want you to succeed.

In the meantime, we probably need to keep using the VI-SPDAT (hopefully the most recent version) as we transition.  This will likely last a year or two as something new is created. There are simply too many communities using the VI-SPDAT, and it is included in so many HMIS and is woven into so many Coordinated Entry processes, that the system may come to a grinding halt if we flipped the "off switch" too fast. I am not suggesting we paralyze the system at the expense of creating and transitioning to a new tool/approach.

I don't have a funder for this idea. But we haven't had funders for the development of any of the SPDAT products, including the VI-SPDAT. What other firms call profit, we have generally reinvested in products and pro bono work. I am willing to pony up some OrgCode funding to help get this started. I am also volunteering OrgCode team time. Collectively, once all of us figure out governance and leadership and an approach, we can work together to find the necessary funding.

The SPDAT (not the VI-SPDAT) will remain. It is the baby and I continue to believe in it. So, for any community that has invested time and energy into using the full SPDAT, our support and work on it will continue. It is an imperfect work in progress, but it is far more aligned to OrgCode's values than the VI-SPDAT ever was.

My sincere thanks to every person and organization that helped make the VI-SPDAT what it is.

My apologies to any person or organization that I have offended along the way.

I think the VI-SPDAT has had a good ride. It, too, has always been an imperfect work in progress. Some of the critiques of it are bang-on. Others not so much. But I am not going to promote it anymore, nor am I going to defend it anymore. Our first obligation has to be to people experiencing homelessness, not to maintaining a tool. We have more important things to do than debate or celebrate a tool. We have people to house. We have homelessness to end.

Adapting to Better Serve: How OrgCode has Adjusted in the Pandemic

For over three months we have all experienced upheaval. OrgCode is no different. We used to travel all the time and be present in community after community. Obviously, a pandemic can quickly change that approach to supporting communities. I wanted to take a few minutes to outline how we are adapting our approach to assisting communities in light of COVID-19 and share what is new and exciting with us.

Because of demand for training, even amidst of a pandemic, we have been retooling our most popular trainings. This isn’t just delivering the same content as before but in a webinar. No, we have been researching the most effective way to deliver online training and amending presentation materials. Take a look at the offerings planned from July through to the end of December. Register before July 1 and take 20% off the training cost with the discount code ORGCODE

Beyond the webinars, we are offering two online learning collaboratives that kick off in July and are focused on assisting communities in enhancing their service delivery. One collaborative assists agencies with the transformation of shelter operations to amplify housing focused and trauma informed service delivery. The other provides coaching and supports for the transformation of street outreach as a primary connect to permanent housing led solutions.  Over a six month period OrgCode team members will assist with the following: analyze and recommend improvements to policies: collect and analyze performance data; provide considerable and customized coaching in between group sessions; and, offer four dynamic and comprehensive instructional sessions. We are confident that both of these learning collaboratives will be a game changer for organizations that wish to be truly focused on ending homelessness through shelter or outreach services. You can read more about them in the Online Training section of our website. Space is limited for the collaboratives because of how intensive the supports will be. Register before July 1 and take 10% off with discount code ORGCODE

If you have any questions about the Online Training or Learning Collaboratives, contact our team.

OrgCode continues to engage with communities for specialized consulting assignments across North America. Currently we are helping communities shift shelters and street outreach to becoming truly housing focused, reviewing and recommending refinements to coordinated entry systems, reorganizing larger non-profits that deliver homelessness and housing programs, completing program evaluations, and developing standards for practice. Big chunks of this work are happening remotely in the new pandemic reality.

The other area of practice we continue to be available to assist communities is in HMIS. Did you know that OrgCode is the HMIS system administrator for some communities? For smaller and mid-sized communities, this is a very cost-effective way of ensuring HMIS compliance and reporting is taken care of by HMIS experts. If this is of interest to you, reach out to David.

Let’s end with a bit of good news, shall we? If you missed it a couple weeks back, we released the next versions of the VI-SPDAT for Single Adults for USA and Canada. The Family VI-SPDAT has also updated and released. Training videos, background materials, and how we went about updating the tools over the past two years are available for anyone to take a look at. You will also find guidance documents for completing the tool with two population groups thus far. We are grateful to partners in the Indigenous community that helped create guidance for completing the tool with people who are Indigenous. We are equally grateful to partners in Domestic Violence related services who helped create guidance for completing the tool with people impacted by household violence. Tools for youth will be available on Friday, June 26 and the next versions of the full SPDAT assessment products will be available in the coming weeks.

Pandemic Response Next Steps: Using A Framework for COVID-19 Homelessness Response

This blog was written by Ann Oliva, Visiting Senior Fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the Leader in Residence with OrgCode, and Iain De Jong, the President and CEO of OrgCode.

We hope you all have read A Framework for COVID-19 Homelessness Response put out by the National Alliance to End Homelessness and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. If not, you can read it here. Regardless of whether you still feel like you are fumbling in beginning steps or are ready for longer-term planning, the Framework is a comprehensive resource that will be updated regularly.

The Framework is critical for our response as a sector – but it has to be used in concert with strong leadership at all levels in order to be maximized. It examines different timeframes for different activities in our response and outlines which area of the service system we need to work on (e.g., unsheltered homelessness, housing, shelter, prevention and diversion, and strengthening). Another interpretation of the Framework is a list of everything we need to prioritize for funding and implementation in our communities, along with where we need to advocate for change or resources to be effective.

The decisions we will need to make, the partnerships we will need to create and the speed at which this is all happening is daunting for any leader. But even though reviewing the document can feel a bit like drinking from a fire hose, it can provide the structure needed to help you and your partners navigate through difficult decisions. Step number one for your community is figuring out which aspects of the Framework are relevant, which ones are not relevant (at least not now), and prioritizing implementation from there. This will be based upon where you are at generally in your community response: items that need to be addressed immediately; items to be addresses in the short-term; items for the medium-term; and, items that are longer-term in nature.

You will have work to do in figuring out the “how” for items in the Framework. It does a lot with the “what” and “when”, touches a little on the “why”, and not (yet) on the “how”.

A pathway to recovery in homelessness and housing in your community is going to require leadership. Those leaders need to come from non-profits, as well as government. It needs to include public health officials as well as homelessness and housing experts. This should not be an exercise in one side being the funder and the other being a recipient without dialogue of how to recover, following the steps and ideas of the Framework. There should be collective decision making about which resources to invest in which manner moving forward.

The journey ahead is going to come with even more decisions being necessary than have already been made. One of the toughest decisions will always be “What is right?” This is especially true when there is pressure to do what is politically palatable or easier, when that may not hold the right answer. For example, doing prevention for higher income folks without taking into account the needs of people experiencing homelessness or the most at risk/marginalized populations first may be the easiest thing to do with the money coming down, but it is not going to impact the most hard-hit or marginalized.

Our recovery must compel us to lead with equity. The reason that we need to make the hard decisions is because people of color and other marginalized populations (people who are disabled, those who identify at LGBTQ2S+ or are extremely low income) often get left out of these conversations and resources. That is a mistake. Who is making the decisions and who is at the table matters. Communities and organizations should deliberately involve people who are impacted so that good decisions that reflect real experiences and lived expertise can be made.

The Framework is not the answer to all of our struggles or resource shortcomings. In fact, the Framework even notes:

“Communities should use funding as strategically as possible. National estimates for need on homeless response to COVID exceeded the amount allocated for ESG-CV, therefore it is important to ensure that planning includes ways to maximize ESG while using other non-dedicated resources for eligible activities.”

Better that we use any and all available resources to their maximum potential rather than just relying upon new resources to meet all of the homelessness response needs.

As the journey to recovery continues, the Framework will be updated on a regular basis by the National Alliance and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. As such, this needs to be seen as a living document for leaders to reference back to on a regular basis.

Response, Action and Wellness During a Pandemic

You may have seen my blog on Planning for a Pandemic from March 1. You can access that here. Now that we are in the midst of a pandemic, I offer the following thoughts to help you, your organization and community. To reiterate from my previous blog on this, this is NOT health advice. Use this information to have conversations with health professionals, funders, elected officials, and senior policy makers in your community.

Shelter Differently

Work with your local health professionals to develop a simple screening that can be applied at initial intake and every time a person returns to shelter if they leave. A similar screening may be applied at set intervals with guests of the shelter that have not left. Usually, the questions at this time pertain to whether or not the person has a dry cough and whether or not they feel feverish/ill.

How you configure your space matters more than ever right now, even if you are moving some sheltering to new spaces like conference rooms or convention centers. You want 37.7 square feet per person. Take the total square footage of the space and divide by 37.7 and that will tell you generally how many people you can shelter in that space. Within the shelter space, the sleeping areas should be configured to allow for separation between cots or bunks (distance of 2.5 feet is good when we are not in this situation, the more you can increase this, the better right now), and a head to toe configuration of arranging how people bunk down. 

If you are opening a new space for sheltering, aim for the following:

• A minimum of one (1) washroom that is barrier-free, fully accessible and designated gender-neutral

• A minimum of one (1) toilet for every fifteen (15) clients up to the first one-hundred (100) clients, and one (1) toilet for every thirty (30) clients thereafter. Urinals may replace up to half the number of required toilets in men’s bathrooms

• A minimum of one (1) washbasin for every fifteen (15) clients

• A minimum of one (1) soap dispenser within 0.6 m. (2 ft.) of each washbasin

• A minimum of one (1) shower for every twenty (20) clients.

How you staff and support people in shelter may also look different.  With staffing shortages as staff become sick or their loved ones do, you may be forced to look at skeleton crews and dedicated schedules for essential services, including janitorial work. Some shelters may find it better to adopt scheduling practices used by first responders such as “staffing in place” with longer shift rotations…like three days on, three days off. Naturally, the three days on will require staff to sleep in shifts in the place they are providing shelter in order to manage fatigue and maintain wellness.

Unless you set up your shelter intake process properly across your system, and you add shelter capacity, you can expect some people to start moving from one shelter location to another, especially if they think it offers the likes of a break in routine, better amenities, better food, or more relaxed rules. You actually want to put policies and procedures in place now that decreases the likelihood of people on the move in such a manner.

Also think of how people use your space when lines are involved. If you still have people that queue up for shelter access, bathroom use or meals, ensuring social distancing remains in place as best as possible when people are in line

If you are using a facility that was never designed to be a shelter, you should give some thought to air exchanges over the course of the hour and whether or not the number of air exchanges are sufficient for the volume of people in the facility. The more air exchanges per hour, the better.

Examine every single rule or policy that may, under other circumstances, result in the individual or family being asked to leave the shelter, if only for a brief period of time. Ask yourself at this point which of these are 100% essential at this period of time, in these unprecedented conditions. Removing or relaxing as many rules or policies as possible is not going to put already vulnerable people into, perhaps, a more vulnerable situation.

While we have no idea at this point when this will happen, if you expand capacity now you need to be putting some thought into how you will retract capacity later – if this is truly an interim measure. (In some communities this may permanently increase shelter capacity which may or may not be a good thing based upon a slew of variables.)

Quarantine Locations

Already in many communities there is a struggle to figure out where the best location will be to quarantine people who are homeless because of the virus. The best advice on this one is this: do not let the homeless services system become solely responsible for solving this potential need. Some within the health community have never been to a shelter or other homeless services facility and have zero idea that this is not a possibility or practice, unless there are fully health specialist-staffed, separate facilities just for homeless individuals and families to be quarantined. Only in rare circumstances with rare building configurations can I think of any shelter where establishing a quarantined wing may be possible. And even then, they will need people with greater health expertise to provide the human resources necessary.

Do Outreach Differently

If your community has expanded shelter accommodation or motel options, your outreach has likely moved from intensive supports to a desire to connect people that are unsheltered to the latest available emergency shelter options at this time.

If you do not have increased capacity, now is not the time to be spending precious time to try and thread the needle of having people compete for a single shelter space. Instead, focus on knowing where all encampments are. This will be critical for future contact tracking in some instances. Remember to maintain social distancing when engaging and use personal protective equipment to decrease health risks for you and your clients. With so many community services impacted, dropping off supplies so people can meet their basic needs is okay. If you are not gloved when doing so, consider leaving a plastic bag with disinfecting wipes for people to use when they receive the materials to they can wipe them clean.

Take the time to plan your outreach efforts. Prioritize who you want to reach based upon things like how vulnerable people are within different areas, as well as how mobile the people living within the encampment are. For example, a sequestered camp that has little to no interaction with the outside world may be served differently (less frequently) than a camp in a dense urban environment with lots of interaction with others.

There will be some people who were sheltered that choose to become unsheltered at this time if they deem it safer than the possibility of disease transmission within shelters. The outreach worker needs to use existing knowledge from HMIS when engaging these individuals and families rather than treating them as new individuals or families to be served. Continuity of service is better than repeating stuff that has already been done or is in the works to support the individuals or families.

Be very clear the purpose of your outreach at this time, and how the intention of the outreach may currently be different than if these were normal times. You don’t want to confuse people now or later.

Now May Be the Time When Some Sanctioned Encampments Make Sense

This is not the case for every community, but for some, centralizing outdoor camping opportunities (with appropriate spacing between tents) may make the most sense for ensuring there are hand-washing facilities, toilet facilities and food drop-off or preparation locations that are easier to serve and support. Unless your jurisdiction is special, remember that people cannot be forced to these locations, only encouraged to access them if required to take care of their needs.

Do Housing-Based Support Differently

There will be a natural tendency to move towards “checking in” with program participants as opposed to doing case management supports remotely.  We will have more on this in the not too distant future, but suffice to say we need to balance this. Yes, the immediate welfare of the people you are supporting in housing is paramount. But that does not mean we should abandon all previously constructed goals. There may be a need to examine goals, timelines and activities associated with them, but do not abandon them. Spend time figuring out if there are methods for staying in contact with program participants through phone calls or FaceTime or similar technologies. For those where technology is not an option, you may still need to provide them written information on how to contact you and how to be supported at this time. That can be mailed if necessary. Don’t think that because you have not heard from some individuals or families that all is okay in their world.  Professional responses to pandemics must recognize and respond to the impact of fear and anxiety on the mental wellness and housing stability of participants as well as the immediate needs for basic supplies and medical screening.

Harm Reduction and Supporting People Who Use Substances Can Look Differently and Presents Unique Challenges

Where, how and what people use when it comes to alcohol and other drugs can look quite differently during these times. If there is an appetite, now may be the time to institute a Managed Alcohol Program or Safer Consumption Site.

Here are some practical questions and thoughts to consider in your planning and actions at this time:

• How do people with dependency on alcohol or other drugs get access to their product of choice at this time? If we are practicing social distancing and decreasing community interaction, can we make alcohol or other drugs (or safe alternatives for detoxing or reduction) available to people where they are at rather than expecting people to go into the community?

• For people working on cessation or abstinence, how can they access supports at this time? There are online AA meetings, for example, but people may need access to technology to take advantage of this opportunity.

• As people’s product supply chain may change, they may not be as familiar with the product they are using or its potency. Encourage people to protect themselves by starting with smaller dosages first to reduce unintended overdoses.

• Alternate use methods may be the key to success for some to make what product is scarcely available last longer. Now may be the time for the conversation about alternative administration techniques such as booty bumping, for example.

• Using with a close friend may not be an option right now. Talking with people about how to plan the in-tox can become important so that people are safe, thinking about overdose prevention, and managing appropriate social distancing.

• Source of income like panhandling or sex work to afford substances will be on the decline. This will leave some in a state where a medical intervention may be required if they were dependent on a substance like alcohol that they cannot access right now. A number of others will be dope sick. Assisting staff on how to incorporate harm reduction conversations and resources in their interactions with participants will be essential.

Do Coordinated Entry Differently

Now is not the time to abandon coordinated entry, but it does require doing it differently. There will still be vacancies to be filled and many landlords have adapted their practices for lease signings and move-ins during this period of time. On the front end of coordinated entry, move to phone screening and diversion practices, as well as telephone-based triage and assessment whenever possible. Of all the horribleness of this current time, one silver lining is that you may be able to reach some very vulnerable people who otherwise are service adverse. You don’t want to miss this opportunity to get them included in your CES.

Compassion Fatigue Will Set in Quick Under Certain Conditions

You have likely felt the overwhelming need to ramp up service efforts differently in response to the identification of a global pandemic. It is important to recognize that this is the first wave. There are more waves to come. When you and others in your organization treat this event as a sprint rather than a marathon, you will feel the impacts much more acutely and staff become less effective. In terms of preparedness and endurance, remember that planning for a marathon – rather than a short, powerful sprint – is the best approach to maintain effectiveness and efficiency within the midst of a pandemic. Now is not the time to measure heroes by going above and beyond as fast as possible. Heroes now are those that can put a vision in place for how to manage each wave of impact (including wellness concerns, demands for service and compassion fatigue) and space out the impacts on staff across each wave with the use of evidence informed approaches.

Be Prepared for Stigma

The good news is that some people are talking favorably about intervening in the crisis of homelessness that previously had no interest in homelessness. However, should COVID-19 be found in the homeless population or if there is spread of COVID-19 within the homeless population, be prepared for considerable stigma against the homeless population. There is the possibility of wanting all homelessness driven out of town or have restrictions upon them that do not apply to the rest of the population. Being strategic regarding communication, policies and practices that impact neighbors experiencing homelessness must continue to be a priority in our work.

Collect and Respond to FAQs from Service Users and Staff

Provide sticky notes, a white board or a note pad for your service users and staff to ask their most pressing questions. Then prepare an evidence-informed response to those FAQs in an easily accessed location that promotes facts, not fears. If you don’t know the answers, ask experts who can answer them for you. There will continue to be different rumors and opinions, as well as updated and changing directives. Cut through the noise. Deliver the most up-to-date facts you can. You can probably safely assume that you and your organization have access to credible sources more than people without access to technology. 

Monitor and Reorder Supplies, Especially Food, Hand Sanitizer and PPE

Food security will potentially become an issue moving forward. If you provide meals on the site, starting figuring out your back-up plan if these meals or ingredients to prepare meals are sidelined in the not too distant future. You don’t want to be scrambling later to figure out how to feed people if this goes off the rails. The availability of more non-perishables will help tremendously in weathering the storm.

As for hand sanitizer and personal protective equipment (PPE), yes, health providers are sounding the alarm that these are already limited and in short supply. Better to get your order in the queue now for future supplies, rather than throwing your hands up. Also, you may want to begin researching alternate (and not as good or recommended) approaches to ensuring there is some protection in contact with program participants rather than no protective equipment.

Create an Electronic Wish List that Can Be Filled

Think of the stuff you NEED as an organization to keep running during this time. Create a wish list on Amazon, for example. Every outside person or organization that wants to help with homelessness during this time but cannot visit your organization to drop off supplies should be redirected to your wish list where delivery of the required items can be activated.  Many online retail sites are now offering free delivery on all orders so optimize this opportunity when possible.

Pandemic Planning and Services that Support People Who are Homeless

NOTE: This blog is intended to stimulate discussion in your local community regarding pandemic planning and the homelessness services sector. This blog is NOT medical advice. You should work with your local Public Health officials, or other local health officials to develop a community response to plan for a pandemic, should one occur. OrgCode Consulting, Inc. is not responsible for any misinterpretation or misuse of the contents of this blog.

During the SARS outbreak, I was working in homeless services sector in Toronto, and I recall how much work that went into planning for and responding to the possibility of a pandemic and its impact on homeless individuals and families in the community. I suspect that many of you reading this, have, are in the process of, or are just starting to think about pandemic planning in the event the coronavirus is declared a pandemic. The time is now to be planning and preparing.

People experiencing homelessness are presented with unique challenges in the event of a pandemic. Many who are homeless already have compromised health in some fashion. Many who are homeless have no choice but to be in congregate settings for sleeping, meals, and to get out of the elements, which can be perfect for the transmission of the disease from one person to another. People who are generally poor can also experience considerable stigma in the event of a pandemic. Here are some thoughts to help stimulate discussion in your community on pandemic planning and homelessness:

Expect the Work Force in the Homelessness Services Sector to be Impacted

Health experts have estimated that between 15-35% of the workforce will be unable to work because of illness, fear of contracting illness or because they are caring for their own families that become ill. Think about how, or if it is possible, to keep your homelessness services operating if there was that amount of loss to the workforce in the sector. Would you be able to deliver the same services in the same way? Would staff need to be, or expected to be, at the work site for longer periods of time, possibly including living on the premises for all or some of the pandemic to keep services going?

Consider the Density and Layout of Sleeping Spaces

Many homeless service providers try to maximize the use of whatever space they have to accommodate as many people as they can on a nightly basis. This may work against efforts to decrease spread of the illness. Furthermore, if you don’t already do so, you may want to consider reconfiguring sleeping space to maximize the distance between people and/or ensure sleeping arrangements are organized in a head-to-foot configuration.

Increase Attention About the Importance of Having Clean Hands

Now may be the time to put up posters reminding people about the importance of washing or sanitizing their hands on a regular basis. Even if you don’t normally make hand sanitizer available, you may want to start having it available near the entrance of your facility and reinforcing behavior to always sanitize at the time of building entry.

Early Detection and Screening Methods

At the time of intake, or re-claiming beds for existing guests, it may be advantageous to have a very simple screening about how people are feeling and to see if people have any of the symptoms that may be related to the illness.

Order Personal Protective Equipment for Staff

You may already have masks and gloves and even biohazard-type suits for rare situations. A pandemic would place considerable demand on whatever volume of personal protective equipment you already have on hand. It may already be difficult to get these resources in your community, so getting them ordered now – even if there is a backlog in having orders filled – may be better than waiting until the illness has taken root in your community.

Extra Supplies May be Needed

Now is the time to look at things like the volume of cleaning supplies your organization has on hand, things like hand soap and sanitizer, and food – to name a few. Not only may some items become scarce in the event of a pandemic, going out into the community to get these materials could present unnecessary risks. Preparedness experts often say that having an eight week supply of materials on hand is good planning.

A Seat at the Incident Command Center or a Separate Incident Command Center for Homelessness

While many Incident Command Centers do have members that focus specifically on vulnerable populations, depending on the size of the homeless population in your community it may be warranted to have a dedicated seat at the Command Center just for homelessness related issues. If that is not possible, consideration may be given to organizing and activating an Incident Command Center just for homelessness related incidents during a pandemic.

Map Out Locations of Encampments

Now is the time to start bringing together outreach workers, parks staff and law enforcement to ensure your community has a comprehensive map and understanding of where people are dwelling in unsheltered locations. This information may end up being critical for testing and tracking people impacted by the illness or impacting others with the illness. Even if you start with those encampments known to have two or more people it would be helpful. (As an aside, it is entirely possible that unsheltered homelessness will rise in the event of a pandemic as some homeless individuals and families may leave shelters and go outside if they perceive it to be safer than being in a congregate setting or a homelessness service provider needs to close during an outbreak.)

Expect Some Homelessness Services Protocols and Practices to Need to Change

There can be many changes that may need to be altered or suspended during a pandemic. Service restrictions may need to be relaxed to get more people access to services. Hours of operations may need to change. Queueing practices may need to be altered. If your community has a protocol for encampment abatement, that may need to be suspended during an outbreak.

Plan for Impacts of People Not Getting Access to Medications

Access to and supply chains of medication can be interrupted during a pandemic. Knowing that many people who are homeless live with chronic disease or mental illness where they rely upon medication, consider what is going to happen and how you can still effectively serve people who may lose access to their medications.

Some Homeless Individuals May Die

Death amongst those who are homeless can already have an emotional toll on others experiencing homelessness and the professionals and volunteers who engage with and support them. It is entirely possible there will be more deaths amongst those who are homeless during a pandemic. Your community will likely already be planning larger storage areas for people who die during an outbreak, but may not have thought about deaths amongst people experiencing homelessness.

Consolidating Services

It is possible that a pandemic will result in some homelessness services needing to close. If that were to occur, which services for people experiencing homelessness in your community are deemed critical operations? How could you redeploy staff to keep those critical operations going? Is there any part of the homeless services response that you would cease operating immediately if there was a pandemic?

Know How Privacy and Confidentiality May be Impacted

While this may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, it is possible that consent and sharing of health information as we know it today would change in the event of a pandemic. A freer flow of health information may make all the difference for health professionals and the response to the pandemic.

Unique Challenges When Serving Families

Family service providers need to plan for the unique challenge of a parent(s) that become ill or pass away while their children remain healthy and need access to supports. Working with Child Welfare organizations now to plan ahead for this possibility is better than scrambling to figure out the response if/when this occurs.

Compassion Fatigue May Reach a New Level

Self-care and personal wellness may be difficult if there is large scale disease transmission within the homelessness services sector that frontline workers are responding to for a prolonged period of time. This can lead to impacts not during the pandemic, but may impact the workforce and long-term sustainability of the workforce after the illness is under control or has passed in the community.

Cross-train Now

Many people who work in the sector may be asked to do different jobs than they are accustomed to during an event such as this. Now is the time to make sure you have easy explanations of the tasks of essential jobs and to undertake cross-training. For example, you may want to ensure the Executive Management Team of your organization knows the ins and outs of specific frontline positions they may be asked to perform.

Impactful Outreach

At the recent National Alliance to End Homelessness conference in Oakland, CA I was pleased to provide a presentation on impactful outreach. You can download my presentation here. (Related to this, you can see the recent piece we put out on responding to unsheltered homelessness here, and you can read my thoughts on street outreach in The Book on Ending Homelessness by ordering it here.)

What is impactful outreach?

Impactful Outreach is a professional intervention that is structured, documented and strategic, to meet people where they are at - literally and circumstantially. Impactful Outreach is respectfully persistent in helping people achieve housing and exit homelessness through a process of assessing, understanding and addressing both immediate and housing needs.

The overarching objective of impactful outreach is to reduce and end unsheltered homelessness.

To achieve the overarching objective, impactful outreach shall:

• Be discerning regarding who they want to engage with and why, relative to the community’s priorities

• Know people by name

• Establish rapport

• Meet immediate needs without creating dependency and without enabling

• Focus on connecting people to housing through or outside of CES, and engaging in all processes associated with this (e.g., getting people paper ready)

• Develop strategies to effectively engage with people who do not wish to engage or struggle to engage

• Leverage strengths of various service providers beyond street outreach, within a systems context

• Drive decision-making through the use of data

The impact part is two-fold. For one, it impacts overall unsheltered homelessness by resulting in reductions in unsheltered homelessness in the community. For another, it impacts the lives of each person it touches by moving toward a solution to each person’s/family’s homelessness.

Impactful outreach, in some organizations and communities, disrupts the street outreach paradigm. The measure of effective outreach is not the number of contacts made or provision of goods. Rather, the measure of effective outreach is how many people have their homelessness ended as a result of the outreach intervention.

It must be noted that moving from contact-driven outreach to solution-driven outreach can be a tough sell for some existing outreach teams and for some communities as a whole. There isn’t a magical switch that gets flipped with existing street outreach workers to suddenly become solution-focused in their work. Quite often there is extensive training to be done, and processing of the new approach can require coaching. To be honest, not every outreach worker that currently does contact-driven outreach is able to make the switch to impactful outreach.

At the community level, the paradigm and practice shifts can come with pushback and hiccups along the way. No longer are street outreach workers pseudo-first responders or simply moving from location to location to encounter as many people experiencing homelessness as possible. Impactful outreach is a very targeted approach to street outreach that sees outreach workers engage with a smaller group of unsheltered persons intensely rather than a larger group of unsheltered persons peripherally. The outreach worker, in impactful outreach, is charged with the task of problem solving and getting all of the paperwork and/or documentation in order that will accelerate the unsheltered person in being able to access housing. While quite often housing access comes through Coordinated Entry in impactful outreach, there are some instances where the outreach worker can assist the unsheltered person/family access housing outside of Coordinated Entry-dedicated resources, especially when they have sufficient income.

As more and more communities see rises in unsheltered homelessness, they should examine their current street outreach services. If the way outreach is being delivered is not impactful, we miss the opportunity to impact unsheltered homelessness overall and the lives of many unsheltered persons/families that would benefit from an impactful approach to receiving services.