This page provides resources and guidance around By Name List Scorecard questions 6A-B
Is 100% of your community’s geography covered by a documented and coordinated outreach system?
The following questions pertain to your outreach: It doesn’t mean every inch and corner of your county needs to be covered. It is about knowing the areas and hot spots and making sure the community hotspots know who to contact.
Resources
West Virginia balance of state comprehensive outreach coverage- In rural communities, secure agreements for non-homelessness-specific partners to make referrals to dedicated outreach staff or access points; make sure to maintain face-to-face contact with the client throughout the process
Sample outreach policies:
Spokane InReach Policies & Procedures
Spokane InReach Program Manual
Outreach Standard Operating Procedures:
Coverage: Understanding of, and frequent (>weekly), visits to ‘hot spots’
Coordination among outreach providers to optimize coverage, reduce any low-value/duplicated efforts
Document outreach definitions, standards, practices somehow (“policy”)
Community Bright Spots:
Spokane In-reach: Innovative outreach project to directly and sustainably connect the homelessness system with local systems of care
Spokane's In-reach system map
Funded by ACI-OHY passthrough dollars in Fall 2019
Takes referrals (including self-referrals) under any definition of homelessness as of August 2020. Their focus is on relationships with McKinney-Vento Liaisons and inpatient behavioral health partners
Ensures that young people are included on the BNL by actively enrolling them in HMIS and connecting them with services, including housing
Actively collaborates with street outreach teams
Community-focused mindset enables the In-Reach team to focus energy and change direction towards system changes as they are identified by the ACI Core Team
Walla Walla’s Youth Engagement Team (YET): Coordinated outreach team designed to provide multi-tiered levels of support including legal aid, mental health services, and housing navigation.
Walla Walla’s YET Outreach
Based off of King County’s three-prong YET model
Funded by ACI-OHY passthrough dollars in Fall of 2019
Consists of an LCYC civil legal attorney, 2 housing navigators based out of Blue Mountain Action Council, and a (soon to be added) mental health provider hired through Catholic Charities
Street outreach and system outreach, a series of coordinated efforts to create partnerships across agencies, started in January 2020
Ensures that young people are included on the BNL by actively enrolling them in HMIS and connecting them with services, including housing
Reduces the number of referrals a young person experiences early on by providing wraparound services and addressing different levels of needs as a team
Takes referrals (including self-referrals) under any definition of homelessness as of January 2020
Designed to be mobile outreach to meet young people anywhere in the county
Questions to Consider
Where are your hotspots?
Who are the teams currently conducting outreach?
Who goes where? Are there any noticeable gaps?
What happens when someone in the community wants to make someone aware of a person experiencing homelessness? Who do they call? What happens next? How is this advertised?
Where is missing, who is missing method: Reflect not only on where in the county coverage is low, but also which populations we might not be reaching. Bring whatever demographic data you have from outreach teams to help
Actions to consider
OUTREACH
Complete Outreach Inventory Tool
Monthly Outreach Huddle where providers get
together to discuss programming, coverage, barriers, and case conference clients as appropriate.
Invite all of the outreach teams in the county to a mapping session to identify where outreach staff currently cover and where the gaps are. Ask each person to bring their team’s current outreach schedule!
Use a map of the county to physically mark hot spots and current coverage.
Identify areas of overlap between outreach teams and test strategies to maximize the capacity of the teams to cover the most territory.
INREACH
Day centers, food distribution centers, and healthcare clinics
In cases where there is limited outreach capacity, coordinating to mobilize case managers to work remotely out of a direct service center can bridge coverage gaps
HMIS
Using service transactions to mobilize in-reach. Pulling service transactions to see what services are being the most used then organizing In-reach efforts around those most utilized services
Pulling reports of service transactions in HMIS can help identify trends like what days clients access specific services, or what type of service needs they have
Are young people with lived experience of homelessness involved in conducting your outreach and/or informing your outreach strategies and locations?
Resources
North Central Florida Partners with members of lived experience
Community Bright Spots:
Pierce: This community's outreach team was solely staffed by people with lived experience from homeless vets to YYA and everyone in between. Each YYA was partnered with another outreach member. This allowed a larger opportunity to connect with more folks in the community, especially young folks. Having a YYA with lived experience on the outreach team made the young people in the community feel comfortable and safe when the outreach team approached, since there was someone who could identify with them. Young people also said that it made them feel heard and understood.
YYA on the outreach team would also collect client information and CE assessments in the field which resulted in young people feeling less judgment or fear in sharing their information. This resulted in more complete and better data quality being collected.
Walla Walla: Held two focus groups of young people to identify outreach strategies, locations and ideas; two particular YYA help consult with the Youth Engagement Team. The YET teamed up with YYA to drive to popular hotspots and outer lying areas in the county.
Questions to Consider
Have youth led the map outline for outreach plans?
Have you collected a list of favorite places for youth and young adults to frequent?
Actions to consider
Create a location survey for the young folks to complete
Hire a peer outreach worker on your outreach teams.
Hire YYA with lived experience on outreach teams
Make a big map of the county and ask every young person who comes to drop in one day to put an x on all the hot spots they know about - make sure to explain that the purpose is just for outreach planning! Compare it to what the outreach staff said.
Do a focus group of young people currently staying in shelter and show them the map of outreach coverage that the outreach staff made. Ask them what they think of it, and who they think is missing. Give them space to say what they would do differently, and how they would reach out to young people that outreach workers might be missing. Bring that info to outreach workers and implement some or all of the ideas young people identified for a test period.