COVID-19 Guidance for Supportive Housing Providers

Supportive housing tenants are often highly vulnerable populations. It is critical that tenants continue to receive support during this time. CSH highly encourages supportive housing providers to continue to provide support to tenants during the COVID-19 outbreak, while ensuring the health and safety of their staff. The following provides guidance and considerations that can help guide supportive housing providers during the COVID-19 outbreak. (current as of March 20, 2020)

This guidance addresses the following key items:
Home visits
Case management
Staff training and capacity
Considerations for congregate programs and operational issues

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April 2019 is National Child Abuse Prevention Month

National Child Abuse Prevention Month recognizes the importance of families and communities working together to prevent child abuse and neglect and promotes the social and emotional well-being of children and families. During the month of April and throughout the year, communities are encouraged to increase awareness and provide education and support to families to improve the well-being of children. CSH can help communities do just that through One Roof.

One Roof is the CSH initiative that helps policy makers and stakeholders understand and implement Keeping Families Together Supportive Housing, designed to ensure families in the child welfare system are safely and permanently unified or reunified and stabilized in their own homes with access to services that improve the lives of children and their parents. CSH is dedicated to bringing many sectors and systems together, especially housing, healthcare and child welfare, to significantly improve outcomes for vulnerable households and our children.

Keeping Families Together Supportive Housing empowers families in public and other rent-assisted housing by combining the stability of a home with intense case management and services based on the goals of the whole family, while strategically targeting and attending to each adult and child.

Learn more about our efforts to help families and protect children at www.1RoofFamilies.org.

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New at CSH Summit 2019: Connecting the Dots Design Labs

A new feature for attendees at CSH Summit 2019 offers interaction with peers, and concrete strategies and tools to implement in your community. The Connecting the Dots Design Labs are all about cross-system solutions, breaking down silos and better serving people in need of supportive housing as well as the community at large.

Participants in each Design Lab receive comprehensive exposure and experience over three-sessions:

  • Session I: In the first session, participants take a deep dive into the issue and the complex challenges surrounding it – learning through data, their colleagues and experts.
  • Session 2: In the second session, participants explore cutting edge solutions and generate ideas to take back to their communities.
  • Session 3: In the third and final session, participants create action plans and presentations designed to garner support back home from critical partners, such as funders and elected officials.


Connecting the Dots Design Labs

Housing and Health Partnerships Can Improve Health Equity

The supportive and affordable housing sector is increasingly partnering with health care to improve systems and outcomes for shared clients. Common ground for these sectors includes enormous obligations, limited resources, vast regulatory requirements, and strong missions to help the most vulnerable in our communities. These sectors are essential partners as communities work toward addressing the issue of building health equity. This Design Lab will help participants forge the relationships necessary to build more equitable systems of care.

(IN)FUSE @ Summit

This Design Lab will empower participants to begin and then scale their own FUSE (Frequent Users Systems Engagement) projects, reorienting communities around a FUSE framework. FUSE is designed to identify, prioritize, and stabilize frequent users across the housing, health, and justice sectors through data sharing and supportive housing. Sessions will blend data analysis and information management techniques, community and peer engagement, and equity approaches with FUSE best practices. What you learn will help you build and grow a comprehensive, inclusive, and effective FUSE project.

Coordinated Entry System Refinement

Sustaining a successful Coordinated Entry System (CES) involves an iterative process that includes: (1) extensive and inclusive community feedback leading to refinements; (2) implementation of enhancements and expansion, and; (3) leadership through a racial equity lens. Join us in this Design Lab to learn the steps to facilitate review and refinement of your CES; how and why to expand your CES to include other mainstream systems; and ways to see data through a racial equity lens to help you use your CES to address inequities in your community.

Keeping Families Together

Keeping Families Together links housing providers with child welfare agencies to strengthen society’s most vulnerable families and protect children. Targeted to both new and experienced leaders in supportive housing, child welfare, and human services, this Design Lab will identify issues surrounding vulnerable families and build on multi-sector solutions that create equitable opportunities and improve outcomes. Explore collaborative implementation and systems realignment strategies, including leveraging the Family First Prevention Services Act, Family Unification Program and other resources.

HEART Alliance for Sustainable Families Preliminary Evaluation Findings

This report provides interested stakeholders with a preliminary overview of the outcome
and process evaluations for the HEART (Housing, Empowerment, Achievement,
Recovery and Triumph) Alliance for Sustainable Families. HEART is one of five
national demonstration sites funded by the Children’s Bureau of the Administration of
Children and Families with the United States Department of Health and Human
Services. HEART is a five year demonstration project from October 1, 2012 through
September 30, 2017. This report covers two years of HEART research study data.

HEART is a collaborative community-based supportive housing initiative designed to
assist 50 high risk and high need families in Broward County, Florida achieve family
strengthening as well as housing and economic stability. HEART represents an alliance
of 15 child welfare, housing, legal, health, and social service organizations collectively
working to improve child protection as well as family permanency and well-being.
HEART provides clinical case management, subsidized housing, economic selfsufficiency,
life coaching, legal counsel, health/behavioral health support, and domestic
violence prevention. HEART employs evidence-based interventions such as
Strengthening Families, Trauma-focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and the Center
for Working Families.

Using a Housing First model, HEART seeks to stabilize families involved with the child
welfare system who are at risk of/or experiencing homelessness. To gauge this impact,
Kids In Distress, Inc. (KID) subcontracted with Barry University researchers to conduct
the five-year evaluation of HEART.

Standards for Quality Supportive Housing Guidebook

In creating and sharing the CSH Standards for Quality Supportive Housing, CSH strives to:

  • Build the capacity of the supportive and affordable housing industries to create and operate high quality,
    effective, and sustainable supportive housing units
  • Encourage the investment of adequate resources, especially from public systems, to support that
    capacity
  • Ensure that existing resources for supportive housing are being used efficiently and effectively,
    and support the allocation of new resources
  • Create better outcomes for supportive housing tenants, especially those with multiple barriers to
    housing stability
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Grant Opportunity Announced by HHS, ACYF Children's Bureau

Regional Partnership Grants to Increase the Well-Being of, and to Improve the Permanency Outcomes for, Children Affected by Substance Abuse

Application Due Date: August 13, 2018 by 11:59 PM ET

The Family First Prevention Services Act (Family First) was signed into law on February 9, 2018. This legislation creates historic reforms that are a positive step forward to help children remain safely with their families and support youth on a successful transition to adulthood by restructuring the main federal funding stream for child welfare to expand and enhance prevention efforts. The Family First Prevention Services Act amends Title IV-E and Title IV-B of the Social Security Act which governs federally funded child welfare activities across the country. Family First reauthorizes and updates the Regional Partnership Grants (RPG), targeted grants to increase the well-being of, and improve the permanency outcomes for, children affected by methamphetamine or other substance abuse. The updates to the grants better align with the new Title IV-E prevention services focus, including specifying mandatory partners, such as the public child welfare agency, appropriate courts and the state agency administering the substance abuse prevention and treatment block grant, as well as optional public and community based partners.

RPG grantees are to use specific, well-defined, and evidence-based programs that are also trauma-informed and targeted to the identified population. Earlier RPG grantees learned that it is important to include additional service sectors beyond the child welfare, court, and treatment providers. While housing and homeless response providers would not be the primary applicant, the need for housing solutions has been identified as a critical foundational need in prior rounds of RPG. Therefore, as communities consider applications for the 2018 grants, there is an exciting opportunity for housing providers and homeless response system partners to be included as a part of the teams receiving re-authorized and updated Regional Partnership grants under Title IV-B. Including housing providers and homeless system response partners in the Regional Partnership Grant program aligns with the program goal of helping states, tribes, and communities across the nation develop regional partnerships to provide, through interagency collaboration and integration, programs and services that increase permanency, safety and well-being outcomes of children who are in an out-of-home placement or are at risk of out-of-home placement as a result of a parental substance use.  The One Roof Roadmap highlights the need for collaborative structures and service models when implementing child welfare and supportive housing partnerships. These successful partnerships in jurisdictions implementing supportive housing aligned with CSH’s Keeping Families Together approach, have laid the ground work for integration in these regional partnerships. This RPG funding opportunity provides a mechanism for cross sector teams to move utilize funding to advance collaborative work that will allow for improved outcomes for families impacted by parental substance abuse and child welfare involvement.

A supportive housing approach aligns with the RPG which focuses on addressing common systemic and practice challenges that are barriers to optimal family outcomes, including engagement of parents in substance use treatment; differences in system paradigms and training; conflicting timeframes across the systems; and service shortages in child welfare services and substance use treatment systems. This works allows for alignment of whole family focused services and approaches. Quality supportive housing is recognized by SAMHSA and the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) as a best-practice for reducing chronic homelessness, which in turn leads to better outcomes for mental health and substance use disorders. Children receive the stability needed to reach their potential in school settings, parents receive the support needed to improve their own health and the health of their family, and ultimately, families are able to grow stronger together both during and after formal child welfare case involvement.

CSH began its supportive housing efforts for child welfare involved families through a small pilot program in New York City in 2007, which later blossomed into our signature program – Keeping Families Together (KFT).  The mix and intensity of KFT supportive housing services are tailored to the unique needs of each member of the family unit and address the trauma that many of these families have experienced. Utilizing a unique approach and collaborative service structure, supportive housing helps keep families together. Early successes with the initial KFT pilot led to the ACYF Partnerships to Demonstrate the Effectiveness of Supportive Housing for Families in the Child Welfare System, with the RTC evaluation scheduled for formal release January 2019. ACF highlighted supportive housing as a promising practice for child welfare families in the ACYF-CB-IM-17-03 Information Memorandum on Efforts by child welfare agencies, local communities, and federal agencies to end family and youth homelessness. The US Interagency Council’s recently released “Home Together: The federal strategic plan to prevent and end homelessness” highlights the importance of supportive housing and includes a strategy to utilize opportunities in child welfare policy to expand resources for community-based preventive services to support stable housing outcomes for children and families involved with, or at risk of involvement with, the child welfare system.

Grant information: https://ami.grantsolutions.gov/HHS-2018-ACF-ACYF-CU-1382

Information related to prior RPG grants: https://www.cffutures.org/ncsacw/#rpg_projects

Please contact us at 1Roof@csh.org to discuss further how this opportunity aligns with One Roof goals and local efforts.

CSH Names Three New Pay For Success Awardees

CSH has selected New Mexico Appleseed and the Memphis-based Community Alliance for the Homeless (CAFTH) to receive two separate grants that will determine if Pay For Success (PFS) financing can help create supportive housing for families without homes who also experience high instances of open child welfare cases.

CSH anticipates Appleseed and CAFTH will receive approximately six months of technical guidance to determine if PFS is a realistic supportive housing funding option for them to pursue.

“We are incredibly honored to be recipients of this important award, but the real beneficiaries are the children in New Mexico at risk of abuse and neglect because their housing is not healthy, stable, or safe,” said Jennifer Ramo, Executive Director of New Mexico Appleseed. “The end result of all this work is that those children will live in a home where they can focus on studying and playing, as every child should.”

The Center for Healthcare Strategies will assist CSH in providing guidance to Appleseed and CAFTH during their grant awards.

“As a leader in the fight to end homelessness in Memphis/Shelby County, Community Alliance for the Homeless believes that our community is equipped with resources to impact positive change,” said Cheré Bradshaw, Executive Director of CAFTH. “The technical assistance provided by CSH will significantly broaden our organizational capacity to promote the well-being of child welfare-involved families experiencing homelessness through the Pay-for-Success initiative. The technical assistance from CSH will significantly enhance our ability to end family homelessness in our community.”

A third grant has been awarded to the Community Service Council (CSC) in Tulsa for technical assistance to further advance a PFS initiative undertaken by the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (ODMHSAS), which is designed to help youth ages 17-25 transitioning out of foster care or the criminal justice system who lack stable housing or have experienced homelessness or are chronically homeless.

CSH anticipates CSC will receive approximately 12-18 months of technical guidance from its experts as well as the Nonprofit Finance Fund. The goals are for CSC and partners to build capacity and services to actively participate in the ODMHSAS’ effort to create supportive housing for transitioning youth through PFS financing.

“CSC and other key leaders from across the state have been working on the Oklahoma Opportunity Youth PFS project under the leadership of the ODMHSAS since 2014” said Patrice Pratt, Community Service Council division director for housing and homelessness. “CSC and our partners are honored to be selected for this opportunity.  This grant will assist Oklahoma in taking the next step, developing the quality infrastructure and capacity for providers to achieve successful outcomes through the Oklahoma Opportunity Youth PFS project.”

All three of the awards announced on March 19 are made possible because of funding received from the Corporation for National and Community Service combined with additional financial support from CSH’s philanthropic foundation partners.

CSH & CWLA Host Housing & Family Instability Webinar

Housing and Family Instability Webinar
Prevention and intervention strategies for public system leaders
September 28, 2017
3-4:30 PM ET

How does housing instability impact family stability? Join CSH and the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) in our second webinar about the challenges families face when they are homeless or unstably housed and engaged in the child welfare system. This 90-minute webinar will offer new research about how homelessness impacts family structure and strategies from housing authorities, child welfare agencies and service providers to address these issues through collaborative and innovative approaches.

Moderators: Alison Harte, CSH; Julie Collins, CWLA

Presenters: Ann Deibert, Broward County (Florida) Housing Authority; Andria Dewson, the HEART Alliance; Kim Somaroo-Rodriquez, Connecticut Department of Children and Families; Amanda Benton, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE).

Register for 9-28-17 Webinar Here

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