Coordinated Access in Action in Dallas and Collin Counties

The MDHA team, under Crain’s leadership sought to replicate what the TCHC team did in Tarrant County on this side of the Metroplex in the area of Coordinated Access specifically and the development of an effective homeless response system, in general. Fortuitously, HUD, which had expected up until recently for communities to foot the bill for Coordinated Access, agreed to pay for these systems through the CoC grant process. (TCHC had received the first federal grant for CAS in the State of Texas.) Crain and her new team drew up a detailed plan to replicate the above Coordinated Access System on a scale that fit Dallas, based on the process and job descriptions in the Tarrant County CAS.

The Dallas plan would also include two additional contracted positions. One of these persons would help Collin County, with its unique needs, develop and manage the necessary systems to fully take advantage of the Coordinated Access System. Another would be devoted to helping persons experiencing homelessness obtain social security income, which for many would mean that they can then transition from a shelter or unsheltered living situation, into housing.

The CoC and the MDHA Board (which serves as the former’s board of directors) approved the plan, and it was submitted to HUD, which approved the funding. (Parts of the CAS have already been implemented with previously available funding.) Once this HUD funding arrives in May, the full CAS will be implemented. Here are some specific metrics that MDHA will be tracking:

Quantifiable Metric	Data to be Gathered	Specific Measure	Data Collection Procedure	Data Source
Assess 8 persons or more per day in the CAS	Total persons assessed every day	Did MDHA assess 8 persons or more per day?	Obtain number of those assessed every day	HMIS, DOPS Coordinator
Decrease the amount of time between assessment and client going on to the housing priority list to 3 business days	Number of business days between assessment and client going on to housing the priority list	Is the number of business days between assessment and going on to the housing priority list, 3 business days or less?	Obtain dates of assessment and going on to housing list for all those assessed, and subtract the former from the latter	HMIS, Housing Priority List, DOPS Coordinator
Decrease the number of days any client is on the housing priority list prior to housing to 90 days or less	Number of days each person is on housing priority	Is the average number of days of persons on the housing priority list 90 or less?	Obtain dates of DOPS of each person going on to housing priority list and housing, and subtract the former from the latter	HMIS, Housing Priority List HIC Specialist
Raise the occupancy rates in all CoC programs to 98%	Number of beds in CoC programs vs. number of persons enrolled in the programs	Is the number of persons divided by the number of beds equal to or greater than 0.98?	Obtain the number of beds and number of persons in CoC programs, and divide the former by the latter	HMIS, HIC Specialist

We look forward to keeping you up to date on how we are doing!

Coordinated Access in Action in Tarrant County – Documentation and Prioritization

MDHA is building a CAS for Dallas and Collin Counties, based on the successful model implemented in Tarrant County.  The Tarrant County Homeless Coalition (TCHC), led by Cindy J. Crain, was an early adopter in the world of effective homeless response systems and CAS. One of the early discoveries that Crain and her team made was that they needed a well-oiled system not only for a prioritization of services, based on a person’s needs, as stated above, but also for determination and documentation of each person’s status.

Why is this? Every housing program operates under very specific rules and regulations. The most basic of these define who is homeless, who is chronically homeless, and which housing solutions such status makes them eligible for. Other rules and regulations further segment these populations. Some programs are specific to veterans, but only veterans with specific types of discharges. Other programs are specific to persons with HIV/AIDS. Some programs are for only for single men and women, and others are only for families. These bureaucratic “hoops”, if not kept in mind and managed, may cause the best of systems to grind to a halt.

The TCHC team realized that if the housing priority list was to remain true to its name, rather than become another in a series of meaningless waiting lists, they needed to place a premium on documentation. Each client needed to have a documentation and priority status or DOPS. They needed a DOPS Coordinator to work on this task and this task only, so providers could easily “pull” persons off of the housing priority list without any bureaucratic holdups. At the above mentioned “front door” i.e. the point of assessment, all documents regarding a person’s history and status were to be collected. These would include birth certificates, driver’s licenses, marriage certificates, social security cards, military discharge papers, documents proving a person has a disability or HIV/AIDS, and documents attesting to one’s homelessness. Frequently, not all of these are readily available, and so the DOPS Coordinator would work with the service provider helping the client in obtaining these documents. Once all necessary documents were obtained, housing programs could then pull persons that match their programs, in order of priority off of the list and house them. This flow chart that MDHA uses today clarifies this in a visual way:

 

 

The TCHC team also realized they needed to create a set of Coordinated Assessment Prioritization Guidelines (the DOPS Matrix), that cross referencing each person’s DOPS status with a person’s level of vulnerability and need would guide housing providers, in deciding who needed to be housed first. This is the DOPS Matrix. It helpfully awards a priority ranking to each person, based on multiple factors, and simplifies the job of housing providers in a systematic way. By clicking here, you can see the DOPS Matrix in use by MDHA today.