Question 1: Does your by-name list include all young people currently experiencing homelessness including:
A: Young people living on the streets or other places not meant for human habitation
Created a "no wrong door" process. Agencies that don't use HMIS have a way to share information with agencies that use HMIS and ensure that the young person is added to the BNL. Street outreach identifies young people living in these locations and are able to enroll them in HMIS, thereby getting them on the BNL.
B: Young people living in shelter, transitional housing or other time-limited settings
All of these organizations use HMIS already, and if a young person is enrolled in HMIS they are automatically included int he BNL.
C: Young people living in unsafe or unstable situations (see “Key Terms”)
Any organization that does not use the McKinney Vento definition of homelessnes refers young people to the ACT team, who enrolls them in HMIS
Question 2: Does your homelessness system have specific protocols for coordinating with other key systems to quickly and accurately identify young people within those systems who are experiencing homelessness (as defined in “Key Terms”), including: (In other words, are young people experiencing homelessness who are presenting to these systems quickly identified as such?)
A: Your child welfare system?
Capturing information from DCYF through the Pierce County Alliance (the ILS provider for DCYF). There is an MOU in place with Pierce County Alliance to ensure referrals are happening for YYA in IL programs. The ACT team presents regularly at DCYF staff meetings about the referral process and staff are assigned to connect with specific DCYF offices regularly.
B: Local school districts?
Each McKinney Vento liaison has an outreach contact on the ACT team, and there is at least one liaison per school district. Each outreach staff on the ACT team is assigned to each of the specific district level McKinney Vento Liaisons to receive referrals and maintain communication
C: Your juvenile justice system?
ACT team receives referrals before a young person is discharged from the juvenile justice system at both the county and state level. TeamChild also actively refers their clients to the ACT team when appropriate.
D: Inpatient behavioral health?
Working with Great Lakes, CLRs inpatient and mental health collaborative. Part of "no wrong door" process and ACI Lead introduced these organizations to the ACT team. The second phase includes introducing outreach staff to these organizations.
Question 3: Does your homelessness system have specific protocols in place for coordinating with other key systems to ensure that young people in those systems experiencing homelessness (as defined in “Key Terms”) are accounted for on your by-name list, including:
A: Your child welfare system?
When a referral is made, a young person is automatically enrolled in a program depending on their classification of homelessness, which automatically enrolls them in HMIS.
B: Local school districts?
When a referral is made, a young person is automatically enrolled in a program depending on their classification of homelessness, which automatically enrolls them in HMIS.
C: Your juvenile justice system?
When a referral is made, a young person is automatically enrolled in a program depending on their classification of homelessness, which automatically enrolls them in HMIS.
Question 4: Is your community able to track young people exiting the foster care system without stable housing and to ensure that those individuals are added to your by-name list if they are experiencing homelessness (as defined in “Key Terms”)?
DCYF sends a referral to the ACT team or to the Pierce County Alliance as part of the exit planning process, depending on the path each young person wants to take (extended foster care/skills training or exiting the system).
Question 5A: Is 100% of your community’s geography covered by a documented and coordinated outreach system?
Increased capacity of the ACT team through OHY funds. All outreach providers across the system met to strategize how to ensure full geographic coverage of Pierce county and agreed on zones to cover. The Core team created a one pager with all resources split out into geographic area. Includes System and street outreach.
Question 5B: Are young people with lived experience of homelessness involved in conducting your outreach and/or informing your outreach strategies and locations?
Conducted focus groups across the county to gather input. Young people worked on the focus group questions and facilitated the focus groups. Changes were made based on this input. Young people with lived experience are part of the outreach team.
Question 6A: Are there youth-specific access points where young people can seek housing and services and be added to your by-name list without having to present at an adult shelter or facility?
Young people can present at the REACH center, HYPE center, Sarah House, Oasis Youth Center, Beacon Center. Young people can also be referred onto the BNL by outreach people at different locations in the community.
Question 6B: Do you regularly collect feedback from young people experiencing homelessness to identify barriers to accessing your system and address them?
The Core team used a focus group to get youth feedback on their CE process, and used the information to make changes to that process and the way they ask questions. From there, the group decided to develop a Youth System Survey to regularly get feedback from young people across the system. A smaller workgroup led by Pierce YYA worked on a draft of the survey, received feedback from the core team. Young people tested the survey with 4 other young people to get their feedback on the questions and changed some based on that. The core team made final edits and a Pierce County YYA administered it to 17 young people. The intention moving forward is for youth providers and CE access points to administer the survey broadly, and for the Core team to continually review the responses and use them to create change via improvement projects.
Question 6C: Does the feedback you receive from young people indicate that they are able to access your system in an environment or through a mechanism where they feel safe, respected and comfortable?
These three questions are asked in the survey to confirm that it is the case.
Question 7: Does your community use a youth-specific assessment tool to determine homeless status, triage housing and service needs, and support prioritization based on youth-specific needs and vulnerabilities?
Pierce county has a custom-built youth-specific assessment tool.
Question 8A: What percentage of federally or publicly funded providers (including CoC Program funded providers and RHY providers) serving unaccompanied youth report data into your by-name list?
Anyone who receives government funding is required to enroll clients into HMIS, meaning they are automatically included of the BNL
Question 8B: What percentage of non-federally or publicly funded providers serving unaccompanied youth report data into your by-name list?
The Core team mapped out all of the non-HMIS providers and prioritized who needed to be outreached to. Team members divided the providers and reached out to them with information about the outreach and referral process, and learned that their HMIS system covers the big majority of young people in this population.
Question 8C: If you have at least 90% of providers reporting data into your by-name list regardless of funding source, which choice below best describes the approximate percentage of young people currently experiencing homelessness who are served by these providers?
8A + 8B = 8C
Question 9A: Has your community established a written inactivity policy that: Specifies the number of days of inactivity (i.e. period of time during which the young person cannot be located) after which a person’s status will be changed to “inactive” and do you continue to attempt to to locate the individual before they are moved to inactive status?
Adopted Pierce County inactivity policy, specifying 90 days of inactivity
Question 9B: Takes into account young people residing in institutions, who have been there 90 days or longer?
It is part of the inactivity policy.
Question 10: Does your by-name list have a way to account for young people experiencing homelessness who have not consented to services and/or assessment?
There is a non-consenting policy. A de-identified profile is created in HMIS.
Question 11: Does your community have policies and protocols in place for keeping the youth section of your by-name list up to date and accurate, including timelines for data submission from providers and ongoing quality assurance protocol?
Timelines follow HUD guidelines (entered into HMIS within 5 days of identification). The ACI coordinator is responsible for ensuring providers adhere to quality assurance standards.
Question 12: Does your community have the necessary data sharing protocols in place to coordinate with systems and providers who may identify minor youth experiencing homelessness to allow data to be collected and shared for the purposes of resolving their homelessness?
Everything is recorded on HMIS. Minors can consent to having their data in HMIS in WA
Question 13A: Does your community collect race/ethnicity data from young people experiencing homelessness in a culturally appropriate and responsive way?
Collected YYA input through focus groups and surveys, and used this information to change language in their prioritization process.
Question 13B: Does your community collect data on LGBTQ+ status from young people experiencing homelessness in a culturally appropriate and responsive way?
All publicly funded providers are required to collect SOGIE data and many have had a minimal level of training. Providers are attending a SOGIE data collection training on Jan 31 2020. The core team asked a lower-level and higher-level staff from 22 agencies to use the LGBTQ/POC Inclusion Criteria Tool and return the results to the Core team, and are planning a follow-up meeting between these providers on 3/30 to look at system-level gaps, identify areas where support or training is needed in the community and problem solve together.
Data Infrastructure Scorecard questions 14a-43
ACI BNL is everyone in the system currently who has come through as a new client or a pre-existing client in an enrolled program. They are moved off the ACI BNL once they’ve exited. The BNL represents everyone Pierce is currently serving. Every month they have to extract data from HMIS - everyone who’s touched the system since 2012. Database has all the entries, exits, demographics and HUD related fields. Then there are queries built off this with specific parameters eg how do we define unaccompanied youth, and that’s what creates the list. Case conferencing data is a similar query in HMIS that does basically the same thing. ACI Coordinator can go into HMIS and pull the same BNL. Tableau solution should help Core Team interpret and use the data for improvement and system change.
Pros include that it is automated and you don’t have to enroll folks in certain projects; they just have a definition of YYA.
Cons: if there’s an exception you have to learn about it as you’re going - updating queries to make sure it pulls correctly. Need SQL expertise to implement it.