Be Awesome (And if you are already, please keep at it)

 Iain's Blog  1 Response »
Mar 162012
 

I haven’t figured out where along the way people think, “You know what would make for a great career? To work with chronically homeless people with a whole bunch of co-occurring complex issues and help them get and sustain housing.” – and then decide to do it for goodness sake. This pertains to the fine folks on the frontline, program administrators, policy wonks, foundation types, elected officials that give a darn about homeless people and a whole raft of other people. The mesmerizing and at time perplexing thing is that some people do decide that this is exactly how they want to spend their lives. In communities large and small. In countries close and far. And it is awesome. Be awesome. Pretty good mantra, right? If you are awesome, continue to be awesome and take time out to teach others to be awesome. If a belief in a higher power made you awesome, then thanks be to that higher power. If you fell into this career by accident and found you were awesome at it, then continue to count your lucky stars and still be awesome. If the Yoda adage “Do or do not. There is no try.” made you want to give this a go and you found out you are awesome at it, then thanks be to Yoda. If (like me) you were attracted to this field because it was a social issue that no one had previously solved, then continue to inspire awesomeness in problem solving. But [...]

National Alliance to End Homelessness Conference 2011 – aka #naeh11

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Jul 192011
 

My last tweet from the conference claimed that #naeh11 rocked harder than KISS on a stadium tour. I stand behind that even as the days pass since the conference ended and reflection sets in and turns in part to wisdom. I think what made it rock for me this year was different than past conferences. From my vantage point there was a bit of an edge amongst conference delegates. The edge wasn’t defiance. It wasn’t even anger per se. It struck me that there was frustration. The source of the frustration? I heard over and over again the impact of the economy on local communities and state governments and decreased fundraising efforts. I heard over and over again about increasing demand for services. But I actually don’t think it was solely either or limited to both of those things. I think there are communities that entered into 10 Year planning fully committed to seeing homelessness ended. But now they see the 10 Year Plan sit on a shelf or the local leadership shift or the resources made unavailable. I think there are people and organizations that understand truly what effective approaches and evidence-based practices are and work hard to implement them, only to find other organizations still questioning Housing First, Rapid Re-housing, Critical Time Intervention, Harm Reduction, Trauma Informed Service Delivery and the like. They feel it is a constant, up-hill battle. I think that the misuse of phrases and terms is stoking the frustration. There was Sam Tsemberis – [...]

Making Sense of Data

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Jul 062011
 
Making Sense of Data

On one of my recent hotel stays, this is what the dashboard showed inside the elevator: Now, there are a few interesting tidbits that make this story even better. First, when I checked in I was told I was on the 1st Floor, which is AKA “L”. Second, 5 is really the second floor. Third, there are only four floors to the hotel. I suspect to the people that work at the hotel and use the elevator daily, this number series makes complete sense. To me, well, it reminded me of those times that I have been parachuted into homeless management systems to help make sense of what is going on. In most instances, they have a collection of data points – sometimes with peculiar labels like this elevator dashboard – and an assumption that everyone knows what the starting point is. Truth is, for any information system to have meaning, it has to be easily understood and be logical. Next week I will be in Washington, DC speaking at the National Alliance to End Homelessness conference. One of the sessions I am doing with Amanda Sternberg, Susan McGee and Kimberly Walker is on performance measurement. During that presentation I will be stressing these key points: Begin the design of your performance measurement system with the end in mind. Too often organizations or communities have been collecting oodles of data without knowing why they are doing it or what it is going to tell them. I say articulate in one [...]

Why I am stoked about the National Alliance to End Homelessness Conference

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Jun 232011
 

I love the National Alliance to End Homelessness conferences. Great networking. Great learning. Best conference there is on homelessness hands down. Did I mention that I have been doing presentations at the conferences for many years now? All around, super duper awesomeness. I will probably blog about this more, but in the fashion of The Late Show, here is my Top 10 list of why I am stoked about this year’s conference: 10. It’s in Washington. When not at the conference there are amazing things to see and do even if the city was built on a swamp and the humidity can be intense. A couple of years ago I went to the Holocaust Museum. Changed me forever – and I am not easily moved. (Okay, so I cried at the end, but don’t tell anyone – and I am not Jewish.) 9. Cool cats. Movers and shakers. Industry leaders. Stalwarts of change. Motivation that all may be alright in the universe. Every year I meet that one person (or persons) who make me want to keep going for another year. Given my personality, these are not your usual touchy-feely burnt out social worker types. These are people who see the world from a different angle and see the beauty in problem solving. 8. Some of the best friends I have I met in Washington. In my adult life, I have always found making new friends to be hard. But something magical happens in Washington where I am exposed to [...]

Prioritizing Who Gets Served Next Matters – The Service Prioritization Decision Assistance Tool (SPDAT)

 Iain's Blog  2 Responses »
Apr 292011
 
Prioritizing Who Gets Served Next Matters – The Service Prioritization Decision Assistance Tool (SPDAT)

When I led the largest Housing First program in North America, one of the things that bothered me was that we had no defensible way to prioritize who we served next. We dabbled with different instruments and had some stellar research thanks to folks like Toby Druce – but couldn’t quite put our finger on exactly how to prioritize who got served next and why. At least not in a defensible, reliable, consistent and valid way. Sure, there are some awesome instruments out there like the Vulnerability Index used by Common Ground and now the 100k Homes Campaign (and we are big fans of both); the Camberwell Assessment of Needs; the Outcome Star; the Denver Acuity Scale. But none of these were a perfect fit for the type of Housing First program that I was leading or other Housing First programs that I was familiar with. One of the first things I started working on when I made the move to OrgCode was to develop the right tool for determining who should get served by what type of housing intervention and why. Being the nerd that I am, I took an inventory of all existing tools that I could get my hands on – hoping that I had just missed something in my previous work. No point re-inventing the wheel. Truth is, not much with credible overlap other than the ones previously mentioned – and even then, too many limitations or shortcomings. I found a small number of communities and [...]