Supportive Housing Worker Training (Interim)

Hey! Before we get started, there's something important I need to explain. TL;DR: this course is not final and it might change. Historically, there have been a few areas that HIFIS is not great at managing. One is outreach. Another is diversion. Another one is supportive housing. And here you are, needing to know about how to do supportive housing in HIFIS. In recent years, we at ACRE Consulting undertook an initiative to propose a new Supportive Housing module for HIFIS. We think it'll get implemented, but it could take a few years to be in place. If you want to read more about it, you can download our recommendations here. So this course is intended to be a stop-gap. We know it's not perfect, but it's the best we can do at the moment. Things probably will change in the next few months or years, but for the time being, this is what we're instructing.  

As mentioned at the start of this course, HIFIS does not handle Supportive Housing very well. We're hoping that this changes in the near future, but right now we're in a bind. So what are you to do? While this is by no means the only way to do things, we have a recommendation that we think balances convenience for front-line staff with also tracking required information that program administrators care about. Here it is: When a client moves in to Supportive Housing, do two things: Add a Housing History record to show that they are housed with you, and Open a Case File (for the whole household) to show that they are receiving case management services from you. When a client moves out of your Supportive Housing, do two things: Edit the Housing History record and add an end date, to show they've moved out. If you know where they're going, create a new Housing History record with that information. Close the Case File to show that they are no longer receiving case management services from you. That's basically it, in terms of the most important basics. You can optionally do everything else in this course, like use the Financial Information module to do budgeting with the client or record how much money they're paying in rent. You can keep track of their appointments, and track their quality of life through periodic SPDAT assessments. Your supervisor will tell you how much else they expect, but the Housing History and Case Management modules are the most important components (one might say the minimum requirements). Nerdy Note If you're truly interested in the logic here, keep reading. Otherwise, just go ahead and Mark Complete. The other options that were considered and rejected include: Using Housing Placements. It's a good module, but doesn't match the workflow for Supportive Housing. For example, you're required to track the client's housing search process, then after they move in, conduct "follow-ups." It's a bit of cognitive dissonance, which is why we're rejecting it. Using Housing Loss Prevention. In a certain sense, Supportive Housing is all about preventing housing loss. But the module's a little clunky and doesn't bring much to the table. Using Admissions. We know there are several programs that are using Admissions for Supportive Housing. It's easy to use and staff like that. However, there are a few really important issues: First, clients in the Admissions module are considered homeless at all times, which means they'll continue to show up on your BNL among other things. Second, you need a bed for each household member to move into. Third, it's really not the intended use, so you're going to get some other unforeseen weird behaviours, like occupancy reports including Supportive Housing units on them.