Housing and Services to Preserve Native American Families with Child Welfare Involvement: Themes and Recommendations from Native American Partners

In the summer and fall of 2022, CSH and Casey Family Programs hosted a virtual talking circle and a series of subsequent conversations with Native American leaders, service providers and families from across the United States that work in the fields of child welfare, Indian Child Welfare Act and supportive housing. These conversations were led by Patty Beech Consulting, and focused on how to better connect quality, affordable housing and supportive services to Native American families who are at-risk of being separated or who have child welfare system involvement and are facing homelessness or housing instability.

RFP: CSH Seeks Consultant(s)
for WI Tribal Supportive Housing Institute

Consulting Services Overview

CSH is seeking consultant(s) to assist with the development and delivery of Wisconsin’s first ever Tribal
Supportive Housing Institute from December 2022 – September 2023.

This work is focused on two tasks:

  • Task 1: Modify Existing Supportive Housing Curriculum for a tribal audience to reflect tribal
    sovereignty, tribal specific funding streams, and Native American culture and traditions; and
  • Task 2: Co-Train/Co-Facilitate the WI Tribal Supportive Housing Institute with CSH and WHEDA.

Preference will be given to applicants who identify as Native/Indigenous. Reponses to this RFP are due
on December 2nd, 2022.

CSH Supportive Housing Institute

CSH and the Wisconsin Housing & Economic Development Authority (WHEDA) are pleased to offer
Wisconsin’s first ever Tribal Supportive Housing Institute beginning in Spring 2023. CSH is adapting
CSH’s premiere workshop experience, the Supportive Housing Institute, to reflect Native American
culture and traditions and take into account the nuances of tribal sovereignty and funding streams.
CSH has delivered the Supportive Housing Institute in communities across the country to support the
development of new supportive housing units. Supportive housing combines affordable housing, with
services to create housing that people who are homeless, have disabilities such as mental illness,
substance abuse, intellectual and/or developmental disabilities can access to build stable lives.

The goal of the Tribal Institute is to significantly reduce the time it takes to fund a project by building a
strong development team equipped to navigate the complex process of developing housing with
support services. We believe the Tribal Institute is a great way to jump start high-quality, culturally
specific supportive housing projects for tribal members across Wisconsin.
The Supportive Housing Institute is based on the CSH Dimensions of Quality which strives to build the
capacity of the supportive and affordable housing industries to create and operate high-quality,
effective and sustainable housing units. The Dimensions of Quality include a baseline definition,
outcomes, and components that comprise a quality project.

Teams will be made up of a housing developer, a supportive service provider, and a property manager,
the three roles necessary to develop a quality supportive housing project. They will apply to the institute
to work on developing a supportive housing project either on or off tribal land. Teams will be provided
with a combination of both in-person and virtual training to better accommodate schedules and travel
needs, as well as provide critical in-person technical assistance and peer learning.

Up to 5-7 teams will be selected to participate in a 6-month experience that is designed to leave them
with a detailed development and management plan for their supportive housing project reflective of
Native culture and tribal sovereignty. The institute will also position each team to successfully apply for
funding from WHEDA and other funding entities.

Detailed Consultant Tasks

Task 1: Modify Existing Supportive Housing Curriculum for a Tribal Audience
CSH is seeking a Consultant to modify the existing Supportive Housing Curriculum for a Tribal Audience.
The work is described below.

• Suggest modifications to the existing supportive housing curriculum to tailor the content to a
Tribal and Native audience, reflecting tribal sovereignty, tribal specific funding streams, and
Native American/Indigenous culture and traditions. The current CSH Institute curriculum
includes approximately 10 modules of training with PowerPoint presentations and inperson/virtual exercises tailored for adult learning. The curriculum is currently being used in 13
institutes across the country.
• Adapt curriculum materials including weaving Native American/Indigenous culture and
traditions throughout the trainings and exercises as well as adding new material that is specific
for tribes, such as funding streams for capital, operating and services on and off Tribal land.
• Timeline: Complete within 3 months of contract execution

Task 2: WI Supportive Housing Institute Co-Trainer/Co-Facilitator
CSH is seeking an experienced trainer who is familiar with Native culture and traditions and has
experience developing housing on tribal lands. The Consultant will be a Co-Trainer/Facilitator with CSH
staff of the WI Tribal Supportive Housing Institute. The work is described below.

• Assist CSH with refining the institute request for proposals document, participate in a 1-hour
institute RFP webinar and review up to 10 applications with CSH to select teams.
• Co-Train/Facilitate 3 virtual and 3 in person sessions with CSH staff. This work includes
preparation before the session and delivery of training content (PowerPoint presentations,
group discussions and group exercises). Total instruction time is approximately 4 hours/day for
3 days for each virtual session and 7 hours/day for two days for each in-person sessions.
• Assist CSH in identifying Native/Indigenous guest speakers and content experts.
• The institute will be delivered in a hybrid model with some sessions virtual and others in person
to better accommodate schedules and travel needs while also providing in-person
opportunities. Costs for travel (flight, mileage, hotel, etc.) will be paid for by CSH.
• Deliver up to 35 hours of follow up technical assistance to institute teams
• Timeline: March 2023 – September 2023

Project Budget

The budget for Task 1 (modify existing supportive housing curriculum) is not to exceed $15,000.

The budget for Task 2 (co-train/co-facilitate the WI Tribal Supportive Housing Institute) is not to exceed
$42,000. This includes both training and travel time for 3 in-person sessions. Additional travel costs will
be covered by CSH.

If you are applying for both tasks, the budget is not to exceed $57,000. This does not include travel
costs which CSH will cover.

RFP Response Directions

We welcome your responses to this RFP. You may respond to only one, or both tasks noted in this RFP.
To assist CSH in selecting the best consultant please note the following in your short 3-4 page, written
response to the RFP:

• Your experience working as a consultant for tribes and indigenous communities to develop
supportive or affordable housing
• Your experience in adult learning methods, creating classroom or virtual trainings, and/or
delivering technical assistance.
• Tribal Affiliation (If applicable)
• Estimated hours to complete task
• Price to complete Task 1, Task 2 or both Tasks

Responses to the RFP should be submitted to: Wisconsin.Institute@csh.org by December 2nd, 2022.

Please feel free to reach out with any questions about this Consulting RFP to
Wisconsin.Institute@csh.org.

Please note that CSH requires subcontractors, including individuals and sole proprietors, to
carry workers' compensation and commercial general liability insurance while performing work
under a CSH subcontract. CSH subcontractors cannot have existing, pending or expired
debarments or other preclusions on doing business with (either directly or indirectly) with the
United States government and cannot have convictions for, nor have any pending indictments
for, fraud or a criminal offense in connection with a public contract or subcontract

Health and Housing: Introduction to Cross-Sector Collaboration (via NASHP)

This article was authored by Marcella Maguire, Allie Atkeson, and Sandra Wilkniss. Dr. Maguire is Director, Health Systems Integration at CSH. Below is an excerpt and link to the article.

For the past decade or more, state leaders have worked across health and housing sectors to strengthen comprehensive services for individuals experiencing homelessness and housing instability. However, challenges remain for successful, person-centered coordination, cross-agency work and implementation. A significant restricting factor that limits coordination is the fragmentation of the health and housing sectors, with persons or households with multiple needs having to navigate multiple systems to address these needs.

The COVID-19 pandemic and related economic and social crises have further exacerbated long-standing needs for coordinated health and housing services. Structural and institutional racism has created segregated communities and limited access to resources, furthering the need to center equity in states’ health and housing work. Click here to access the entire article.

Contracting Opportunity: Partnering With Tribal Communities To Develop Supportive Housing Recommendations for Native American Families Impacted by Child Welfare

Description:

CSH is seeking a consultant with demonstrated experience within Native American communities, and working with tribal experts and leaders to assist in facilitating collaborative development of supportive housing recommendations that respond to the needs of Native American families impacted by child welfare. The consultant will work with CSH and project partners to successfully organize, guide and record meetings and interviews, synthesizing and incorporating findings into a report and related materials which will help inform the end goal of fostering collaboration focused on identification of needs, assessment of promising approaches, and development of recommendations for development or adaptation of culturally responsive and appropriate housing and supportive services for Native American families with children who are living in or at risk of homelessness and involved with state, county or tribal child welfare systems. In partnership with CSH, the consultant will help bring together and facilitate a national group of Native American leaders and organizations with expertise related to Indian child welfare to think through the key questions, partnerships and strategies to strengthen families, ensure housing stability and advance racial equity.

With the support of a consultant, CSH seeks to achieve the following goals:

  • Expand and strengthen relationships with Native community leadership and key stakeholders.
  • Identify engagement opportunities to understand the biggest needs facing Native American and Alaska Native families connected to child welfare systems of states, counties and tribal nations.
  • Connect peers to explore supportive housing approaches for Native families involved in the child welfare system.
  • Bring in expertise on the Indian Child Welfare Act, tribal sovereignty and culture.
  • Lift up the voices of tribal families with lived experience to learn strengths and assets as well as unmet needs. CSH places a high value on integrating lived experience to inform housing and services approaches.
  • Explore compatibility of existing supportive housing models with the unique cultural and sovereignty needs of tribal nations and their members living both on and off reservations, such as Keeping Families Together (KFT), CSH's two-generation approach to supportive housing for families at risk of recurring involvement with child welfare. It integrates supportive services and affordable housing with a focus on ensuring that families are unified or reunified and helping parents and their children thrive.

CSH Mission and Services:

CSH is the national champion for supportive housing, demonstrating its potential to improve the lives of very vulnerable individuals and families by helping communities create over 335,000 real homes for people who desperately need them. In addition to affordable supportive housing, CSH funding, expertise and advocacy have generated nearly $1 billion in community investment and local economic activity. Building on 30 years of success developing multi and cross-sector partnerships, CSH engages broader systems to fully invest them in solutions that drive equity, help people thrive, and harness data to generate even greater outcomes. By advancing supportive housing as a platform for stability and services, CSH is optimizing public resources and ensuring healthy communities.

Background:

CSH has had the honor of collaborating with tribal nations on a variety of work to address housing instability and homelessness for tribal members in Minnesota for the past 15 years. Based on these relationships, CSH believes a supportive housing approach similar to the KFT model could have strong potential to create opportunities for all members of tribal communities throughout the country. According to national data cited by the National Indian Child Welfare Association, “Native children are overrepresented in state child welfare foster care systems, sometimes at rates as high as 12 times their overall population.” The long and horrific history of removing native children from their families affects the impact of current removal as well. Helping connect systems and establish housing and services resources that are culturally responsive and adaptive for tribal communities is essential in ensuring that family supportive housing solutions such as KFT can be successful with Native American and Alaskan Native families and children.  

Planned Activities and Deliverables:

The anticipated project activities to be completed in partnership with CSH include:

  • Participate in planning meetings with CSH to determine details and tasks for two national virtual meetings including objectives, target participants, and determine location and dates of national meetings.
  • Work with CSH project liaison(s) in crafting materials, correspondence, invitations, agendas, content, roles and approach that are appropriate for each meeting or task.
  • Conduct outreach and engagement efforts with target participants.
  • Support facilitation of initial and follow-up virtual national meetings of tribal leaders and experts, including preparation of all meeting follow-up and notes.
  • Conduct individual interviews with attendees after initial national meeting to gather additional feedback and recommendations.
  • Draft actionable framework report and accompanying presentation materials that incorporates and synthesizes themes from stakeholder meeting and interviews, including a set of recommendations and potential next steps for review by the group.
  • Support planning and facilitation of a second convening of initial attendees to review and discuss recommendations and determine direction and next steps.

Funding Available:

An amount not to exceed $25,000 is available for the project. The contract duration is expected to be 6 months. No travel is anticipated under this contract.

Application Process and Vendor Requirements:

To apply for this opportunity, please email 1Roof@csh.org on or before November 10, 2021, with a minimum of two pages and no more than five pages outlining the information below Applications received before the deadline will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

  • Suggested approach in addressing goals outlined above
  • Demonstrated successful performance of substantially similar work
  • Relevant project work
  • Experience and expertise 
  • Years of relevant experience
  • Rate reasonableness and overall cost of services
  • An understanding of the families sector including state, county and tribal child welfare and/or supportive/affordable housing systems preferred.
  • Special consideration will be given to small, disadvantaged, minority or women-owned businesses, including those owned by Native American or Alaska Native tribal members.

CSH understands that the scope of work requested may be conducted by a single consultant, a consultant group, or by an organization. The proposal should provide the name, title, address, telephone number and email address for each person engaged in the project.  If an organization, consultant group, or partnership of consultants is involved, the proposal should indicate who will serve as the point person for the work.

CSH understands the need and is committed to a broader focus on race equity in order achieve greater progress in the field of supportive housing. The work demands that CSH look internally as well as externally through our work and the work of our partners to bring marginalized voices and perspectives to the table. As such, CSH encourages applications from people and organizations led by Native American tribal members, people of color and people with lived experience.

Please note that CSH requires subcontractors, including individuals and sole proprietors, to carry workers’ compensation insurance and commercial general liability insurance (CGL) while performing work under a CSH subcontract. CSH subcontractors cannot have existing, pending or expired debarments that preclude them from doing business with the United States government and cannot have convictions for, nor have any pending indictments for, fraud or a criminal offense in connection with a public.

If you have any questions, please contact 1Roof@csh.org.

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Renting 101, A Guide to Successful Apartment Living

While this guide was developed for a San Diego based audience, the guidance can be tailored to any community.

Through a collaboration between CSH and the Southern California Rental Housing Association (SoCalRHA), a helpful new resource is now available to guide new or returning renters through the often confusing and sometimes overwhelming process of leasing a home and remaining safely and stably housed for many years.  

The combination of quality housing and support services (supportive housing) provides the stability and support many people need to thrive. Available in both English and Spanish, Renting 101, A Guide to Successful Apartment Living provides tips, suggestions and recommendations intended to help anyone transition from a variety of circumstances to living in affordable/supportive housing.

The impetus for this guide was born out of a partnership between CSH and the County of San Diego Behavioral Health Services' advisory Housing Council. As part of its annual work plan, the Housing Council prioritized enhancing informational and educational housing resource materials to help lower income and/or disabled residents and persons rehousing after experiencing homelessness with finding, leasing and then successfully retaining safe, healthy rental housing.


Here is a sampling of quick tips you will find in this Renting 101 guide:

  • Living in close proximity to others in an apartment setting often requires drawing on social skills, tolerance, and discipline to create a positive experience.
  • Respect the rights of others.
  • Keep your apartment clean.
  • Establish communication and a good working relationship with the landlord or property manager.
  • If you have questions about your lease, talk with your property manager.
  • Be a good neighbor.

A special thanks to SoCalRHA for their work on this guide, and their partnership in this educational effort.

About SoCalHRA & CSH

SoCalRHA is the leading trade association serving the rental housing industry in Southern California. The Association provides education and advocacy to individuals and companies who own, manage or provide services to the rental housing industry, and has been doing so for nearly 100 years. CSH has been working for nearly 30 years to advance solutions that use housing as a platform for services to improve the lives of the most vulnerable people, maximize public resources and build healthy communities. The two organizations are a natural to partner in developing a guide that helps build a healthy tenant-landlord relationship and teach others how to be successful renters.

Renting 101

A Renters Guide for Successful Apartment Living

This guide is for anyone who will be renting an apartment for the first time. The information here is intended to make the transition to this new lifestyle easier. In this guide book you will find helpful tips on apartment living like housekeeping issues, keys to a successful relationship with your landlord and other resources.

Esta guía también está disponible en español aquí.

Alquilar 101

Una Guía para la Vida en tu Apartamento

Esta guía es para cualquiera que este planeando alquilar un apartamento por primera vez. La información presentada busca simplificar la transición a este nuevo estilo de vida. En esta guía encontraras consejosútiles sobre la vida en un apartamento, como la limpieza, la clave para tener una buena relación con tu propietario y otros recursos.

This guide is also available in English, here.

Support Plan for Clients in Quarantine Hotels

Communities across the country are increasingly placing vulnerable people and those experiencing homelessness into motels/hotels to protect them from exposure to COVID-19 and to reduce community spread. Many are using FEMA funds to support these quarantine hotel sites. These funds can be used in the following instances:

  • Those who test positive for COVID-19 and need to be isolated but do not require hospitalization, including those discharged from hospitals
  • Those who have been exposed to COVID-19 and are identified by a health care professional as needing quarantine but do not need hospitalization
  • Those needing individual sheltering as a precautionary measure because they belong to a high-risk group, such as people over age 65 or with certain underlying health conditions

While obtaining a space to safely isolate is critical to ensure the health of communities, ensuring that individuals with significant social, medical, and psychiatric needs are having their needs met within these quarantine sites is also critical.

This document can aid in developing a support plan for those in quarantine sites by covering the following :

Triage | Intervention | Management | Discharge.

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The Road Ahead

From Perpetual Crisis to Thriving Inclusive Communities

Never in recent history has it been clearer our individual health and ability to thrive is inextricably linked to the overall health of our communities. For far too long people of color, persons experiencing homelessness, people living with disabilities, those with histories of involvement with the justice system and many others have been systematically ignored and marginalized. It is both heartbreaking and unsurprising that these same people are being disparately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

CSH board member, Roland Lamb, recently reminded me that we learned that lack of housing is a social determinant of illness, long before we learned that it was a social determinant of health. Today we are witnessing this in real time as COVID-19 spreads rapidly through institutions like nursing homes, shelters, veterans’ homes, mental health facilities, and group homes.

We already know people cycling through shelters, jails, emergency rooms, and other crisis settings incur enormous costs and poor outcomes. We also know that connecting such individuals with housing and supports can improve outcomes and ensure limited dollars are used effectively. Creating housing aligned with services at scale is critical to securing our public health infrastructure.

The looming question is; how do we get there? Today’s crisis presents an historic opportunity to transform all of our communities to places where everyone, particularly those with the greatest needs, have a real home and the support they need to thrive. Our goal must be to not only utilize the unprecedented funding coming as part of the COVID-19 response to implement short term solutions, but also to use it as a catalyst for long term solutions toward building inclusive communities that provide the housing, healthcare, food, employment, education, child care, outdoor space, and connection that we all need to be healthy and make meaningful progress in our lives.

A siloed approach to service delivery can no longer be the norm. Requiring individuals to run the gauntlet from shelter to emergency room to child welfare agency to food pantry to unemployment not only produces poor outcomes but wastes time and money. We must transform these systems to become more equitable, person centered, and collaborative.

While getting to the scale we need will call for a significant investment in resources, we also know that it will result in better outcomes, prevent future public health crises and generate new job opportunities in construction, human services, property management and beyond.

For the 1.1 million people currently inappropriately housed in institutions - we can do better.  We can treat the lack of housing as a public health issue.  And we can seize this opportunity to transform institutional care in our country.

Deb De Santis
President & CEO


This is the first in a series of blogs from our President & CEO on how we move to long term solutions when the crisis abates.

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