Integration of a By-Name List in the Homeless Individuals and Families Information System (HIFIS) CAEH Webinar Dec. 07, 2017

Transcription

1 Integration of a By-Name List in the Homeless Individuals and Families Information System (HIFIS) CAEH Webinar Dec. 07, 2017

2 HIFIS Vs BNL Vs PiT Vs Registry Week What are these 4 concepts and how do they relate? PiT is perfectly anonymous. It s a head count that results in a snapshot of how things were on a particular day. There is little, if any, follow-up. HIFIS is a client management system; an ongoing live database of clients and the services they get. Registry Week is client-identifying and, as such, geared more towards service delivery A registry week is great for: Starting up a client management system (HIFIS) Refreshing it periodically by reaching out beyond the daily boundaries BNL is a subset of the client population that have the highest priority for immediate intervention

3 PiT and Registry Week are in HIFIS You can conduct PiT 2018 on either version of HIFIS: HIFIS 3 is: easy to install suitable for paper-based PiTs HIFIS 4: A bit more involved to install supports mobile surveys as well as paper-based Registry Week combines PiT with VI Surveys start with PiT and optionally continue into VI PiT & VI results are instantly presentable: PiT results have an automatic report VI results can be visualized using Community Solutions Overview spreadsheet.

4 BNL comes to HIFIS! A By-Name List (BNL) is a continually updated list of clients who are homeless in a given area. From a BNL, housing can be prioritized based on conditions such as acuity of need. Two competing definitions: 1- Complete universe of homeless people This is what HIFIS is and has always been 2- Prioritized subset that will receive our immediate attention This is what we will refer to as the BNL HIFIS knows a lot about the clients stored in its database. If we could apply those prioritization conditions to HIFIS data, perhaps the BNL could be automated. HIFIS deals with data so we have to know how it determines that someone is homeless, active, etc

5 By-Name List - Nesting Concepts

6 Outreach in HIFIS HIFIS is not just about shelters. We track all states of HOUSING: 1. Absolute Homelessness Outreach can track this 2. Emergency Shelters 3. Transitional 4. Long-term Housing HIFIS can generate kml files that can be used to plot inforich locations using Google Maps.

7 Including anonymous clients Type of consent Name known Info shared Explicit Yes Yes Inherited Yes Yes Implied No No

8 By-Name List - Nesting Concepts HIFIS

9 By-Name List Quality Elements The 10 quality elements included on the By-Name List Scorecard 1 List all known individuals The bread and butter of HIFIS 2 Implement an inactivity policy A simple enhancement to HIFIS 3 Track status changes Every change is tracked in HIFIS 4 Coordinate outreach coverage If physical outreach is conducted, HIFIS can be used to record it 5 Maximize provider participation Any HMIS is only as useful as it is accepted and used in a community 6 Assign unique identifier Every client has a unique identifier by design 7 Track newly identified individuals Each client has a creation date 8 Track without a full assessment HIFIS tracks clients. Assessments are one of many things tracked 9 Track chronicity after initial assessment Homelessness is trackable at all times 10 Track returns to list HIFIS can track entries to and exits from eligibility states

10 Don t panic!! What you re seeing today is all in HIFIS 3 (not 4) Why? It s easier to experiment with new features in HIFIS 3 If they work out, we add them to HIFIS 4 We re still learning about BNLs so please be patient What you ll see is a prototype and, as such, may not work exactly as advertised

11 Selection Criteria The essential criteria are: The Service Providers the data is pulled from The Common Assessment tool Types of activities that qualify a client for inclusion Homelessness* Ranking order The list can be further refined: Date of Last Activity Date of Last Assessment Episode gap Minimum episodes Minimum nights (Chronicity)

12 Homelssness is 1 2 If Homeless is selected, we need to determine who is homeless and who isn t. HIFIS can tag a client as currently homeless if one of two conditions apply: HOUSING type falls in 3 out of 4 housing categories Currently STAYing at a selected list of Service Provider types

13 Demographic Filters Additional demographic filters such as: Age Group, Aboriginal Indicator, Citizen Status, Veteran Status, Family Role, and Disability can also be selected to visualize target population subsets without affecting the list.

14 Analyzing the Results Based on the selection criteria, HIFIS will select and sort the qualifying clients

15 More goodies The Combined results is a listing that looks at all possible rankings to give an overall rank for each client.

16 Even more goodies The Various results enable us to view the client list ordered by any of a variety of assessment tools and stay attributes.

17 One more goodie The Functional Zero tab is your familiar monthly breakdown of: INs New OUTs Lost housing Returned to Active Got housing Became inactive Running balance Average housing Functional zero

18 Inflows and outflows INFLOW ACTIVELY HOMELESS OUTFLOW INFLOW: NEWLY IDENTIFIED INFLOW: RETURNED FROM HOUSING INFLOW: RETURNED FROM INACTIVE OUTFLOW: HOUSING PLACEMENTS OUTFLOW: MOVED TO INACTIVE

19 We can even graph those results

20 Counting Down & Estimating Timing

21 Monitoring Reduction Trends

22 Tracking Progress to Functional Zero Chronic Homelessness

23 Update BNL Membership All fun and games until you click this button When you Update Membership, clients get actually attached to the defined BNL list You can have multiple BNL lists Clients can be member of multiple lists Only one list is set as Master List at any time

24 Manage BNL Membership A.k.a. the We know better feature Manually Add a client to the list Remove a client from the list Override the BNL order with your own Provide justification for manual overrides Assign a Case Worker to each client

25 Where can I use the list? Client Tombstone Rank on list Common tool score Locate clients Full list Filtered list My cases Where is this? In Clients: In Reception

26 What do you think? Our goal has been to match the theoretical concept of a BNL with the empirical nature of HIFIS data. A purely manual BNL would be a waste of very rich data. A purely automated BNL would always fall short because it will be missing the human factor. We think our best chance is with an automated BNL that has the maturity to recognize that humans will always know better. Your thoughts?

27 Want to learn more about HIFIS? Information about HPS and HIFIS demo.hifis.ca Public site for HIFIS 4 demo info@hifis.ca Contact us directly!