Professional Works Gets Professional Results

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Nov 222011
 

PART EIGHT: Professional Works Gets Professional Results Successful housing programs have a professional orientation. Well-trained staff deliver the housing program. Successful housing programs tend not to be those operated in a charity context where “well intentioned” is sufficient to get the job done. There is too much at stake, and generally too much complexity for a layperson without training to help a client achieve long-term sustainability. I am not anti-charity. There is a time and place for it. And in fact it is often charitable organizations that hire the professional staff to deliver the housing program. The mistake, however, is when untrained staff are directly involved in client interactions. Truth is, it can do more harm than good. With the properly trained staff, housing programs get better outcomes. Here are some of the essential ingredients for ensuring your housing program is provided by professionals who get professional results. Start with the Right Job Description I love to take a poll when I do training about whether the job people are in with their organization is exactly how it sounded on paper when they applied. My non-scientific polling results would suggest that between 90-100% of people in any given audience say the job is different than how it looked in the job description. I encourage organizations to pull together professionally polished and accurate job descriptions for their housing staff team. (You can learn more about the staff compliment for a successful housing team here.) Be clear on the qualifications that you [...]

Helping Landlords Help You

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Nov 162011
 

PART FIVE: Helping Landlords Help You There should be a range of housing options for clients of your housing program to consider. In the best of circumstances this will include everything from permanent supportive housing to private market housing (with or without vouchers or rent supplements) and public/social housing. It will hopefully include a wide variety of units from multi-unit residential buildings to suites in the secondary market like basement suites or rented houses. It may also include the likes of well-maintained and managed rooming houses or boarding homes. And I could go on with the diverse types of housing. The key is to have a range of options that clients can CHOOSE from. Choice is fundamental to housing program success. If your organization does housing placements instead of offering housing choices, you are missing an important part of program success. In one research study it found that clients who felt that they had a choice in where they lived were most happy with their housing, whereas those who felt that had less choice were much less happy with their housing. The latter is also more likely to move and/or experience a return to homelessness. For the purpose of this blog, I want to focus attention on working with private market landlords – even if your organization does not have access to any type of financial assistance to provide to landlords. In a perfect world there would be an infinite number of subsidies to provide; immediate access to subsidized housing; [...]

The 5 Essential and Sequential Elements

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Nov 142011
 

In the fourth part of the series we look at the sequence of events that needs to occur for housing programs to be successful. PART FOUR: The 5 Essential and Sequential Elements Regardless of the presenting needs and complexity of issues, housing programs always function best when housing is the first task to focus on. Throughout my travels I have seen far too great an emphasis on trying to get a case plan in place prior to getting someone housed…or getting the client into treatment first…or getting the client compliant with medication first – and I could go on. It doesn’t matter if you are a fan of Housing First or not – what is critically clear through the evaluations we have performed and my years of professional practice is that housing has to be the first thing worked on or else the rest of the tasks are not going to be successful in helping people achieve housing stability. So, here are the 5 Essential and Sequential Elements of Successful housing programs. Focus on Housing Before Anything Else Create an Individualized Service Plan Increase Self Awareness Support Achievements in Self Management Allow the Client to Reframe/Rebuild One’s Life and Future Now let’s look at the critical components of each one: 1. Focus on Housing Before Anything Else We need to have a range of housing choices for people to consider. This will cover things like permanent supportive housing, scattered site market housing with supports, and perhaps things like well managed [...]

The Structure of the Housing Team and Its Functions

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Nov 112011
 

PART THREE: The Structure of the Housing Team and Its Functions Successful housing programs have three different types of positions: Team Leader – supervises the work, coaches team members and creates opportunities for professional development, assigns households to different case managers, sets priorities and ensures fidelity to the approach. (Read more about Team Leaders, their importance and why they need specialized training.) Housing Case Manager – provides direct support to households (individuals or families) that have been housed and works with them to create an individualized service plan that will help them achieve housing and life stability. Housing Locator – works directly with landlords, property management firms, etc. to secure available units for the housing program. (There is an entire future blog dedicated to how to make this work.) My experience suggests that in most cases social workers tend to make crappy landlords and landlords tend to make crappy social workers. While there will always be exceptions, I would argue that keeping them separate functions helps. The best Housing Locators I have ever met, for example, are not schooled in social work or other helping professions. They know how to speak “landlord” and how to make the business transaction part of the housing program work. But I digress…and again getting ahead of myself and a future blog. Each housing case manager can serve a MAXIMUM of 20 households at any one time. Any more than that and you have a list of people that you aim to serve, but truly [...]