3 Things I Look For When Monitoring
“When you go into a community or organization,” one of the people I mentor asked me the other day, “what are the first things you look for to know if people have bought into ending homelessness?”
Great question.
There are three things:
Leadership
Data
Morale
It all starts with leadership for me. I am not just talking about position power that comes from titles and reinforced through hierarchy. No, what I am looking for is a leader-full organization that has leaders in all sorts of positions who have a shared vision of what it takes to end homelessness. In these types of communities and organizations, they explicitly talk about their shared guiding principles and standards of service. They seek accountability and marry that with realistic optimism. They are collective problem-solvers who steadfastly stay engaged in the mission without being distracted by so many other things that could take them off course.
The importance of leadership (and the frequent absence of it) is one of the main reasons why we started the Leadership Academy on Ending Homelessness a few years ago. Leaders succeed when they are engaged in self-knowledge (the kind you don’t necessarily find on bookshelves), have awareness of others and how others impact them, and when they are systems thinkers. Of all of the conferences and such that a person can go to in any given year, at least some time and attention should be paid to investing in leadership development. If you are interested in the Leadership Academy, you can find more information and register for it here.
The second thing I know needs to be in place for proof that people have bought into ending homelessness is data. And I mean an unrelenting almost obsessed fixation on data. Not just any data – the right data. What do I mean?
Well, it is easy to go to the three performance metrics that matter most: i) Length of homelessness; ii) Positive destinations out of homelessness; iii) Returns to homelessness.
But I think we can go beyond this and still not end up too cute or in the weeds too far. I like data to have context. Show me how you are faring compared to previous time intervals or in comparison to other organizations or communities of comparable size and volume of funding. That is a big part of it.
The next important thing related to data for me are other elements of quality. For example, show me what the data looks like from different acuity bands, or conduct a gender or race analysis of performance using the data - as examples.
Finally, related to data, I look for a community or organization to demonstrate that they are making adjustments and improvements to performance based upon the data that they have acquired – and that they are using THEIR data on a REGULAR basis. THEIR as in they have accepted ownership of the data and what it says and are not waiting for someone else to interpret their data. REGULAR as in there are preset intervals for a data analysis plan to be activated.
Then there is morale which seems more intangible than the other three, though to me there are clear indicators that provide evidence of morale being high or low or somewhere in between. The first thing I inquire about is staff retention and staff acquisition, which is really getting at whether the staff tend to stay in their jobs and whether the organization or the work within the community attracts top tier talent to available positions. The next thing I look at is burnout, compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma. I want to know how the work is impacting those that are doing the work.
By way of morale, I am sensitive to the language that people use when talking about the work and the people that they serve. Are they trying to impose their values and beliefs on others? Are they frustrated, angry or resentful of program participants? Do they legitimately engage in solving problems, or are they more interested in naming problems without solving them or looking to others to always be the answer?
Also, with morale, I look to see if people feel positively challenged by the work itself. This helps say something about commitment and professional development and growth. There is ample proof that when people feel challenged by the work they are more inclined to stay involved and engaged in the work.
Finally, for morale, I look to whether there is a collective, collaborative approach to the work. Does ending homelessness translate to every position on the front line? Or is that something the mucky-mucks on the 6th floor talk about in the admin building but seems foolish to those that are engaged with people who are homeless daily? If it isn’t translating to the frontline, there is a problem with morale.
1 Needs 6
1 shelter bed added to your system of care requires 6 housing resources per year to avoid warehousing people in shelter. And that, my friends, is the part of the discussion that is lost as communities wrestle with expansion of shelter, sanctioned campgrounds, safe parking, and other forms of sheltering. If you are going to add a shelter bed (and maybe you need to in your community), you need to think about how people are going to get out.
1:6 isn't the right ratio in all communities, but it is a good rule of thumb. If you want each bed in the shelter to turn over once every 60 days, then it will turn over 6 times in a year. Each turnover needs a pathway to a positive destination. You can fiddle with the ratio all you want, it will not change the fact that if you do not resource shelter exits at the same time that you resource shelter expansion, you are doomed.
What does this mean practically speaking? Shelter expansion - where warranted - needs to happen alongside a conversation about increases in Rapid ReHousing (or other time limited subsidies) and more Permanent Supportive Housing. If you don't, it is like the hospital that continues to make its emergency room larger without tackling the fact that each person in the emergency room is going to need access to a doctor, and some will need access to more intensive supports, treatment and care. A bigger emergency room without throughput to physicians isn't good healthcare, it is just more waiting space for people to get sicker. A bigger shelter system without throughput to housing resources isn't good sheltering, it is just more waiting space for people to get sicker too.
The era of ending homelessness has, at times, taken on an anti-shelter vibe. It should not. Shelters play a vital role in the crisis response system and are integral to ending homelessness. To play that role, however, the shelter must have an unrelenting housing focus in all that it does. Maybe it is possible to get the ratio to 1:8 or even 1:12 if there is considerable movement towards housing in the shelter. But that would require considerable investment in housing resources along with the investment in shelter.
We can quickly forget that shelters are intended to not be a destination, but rather, a process by which people get housed again. If you add a shelter bed without thinking about (and resourcing) pathways out of shelter, well, things in your community just got that much harder when it comes to ending homelessness. In summary, if you are having the community conversation about shelter expansion, make sure you are having the conversation about shelter exits at the same time. Otherwise, you have just made the job of ending homelessness more likely to be impossible than reality.
Place-Making
Place-making is an intentional process designed to help the newly housed person connect with and take pride in their apartment. Without place-making, connectivity to the apartment is one of luck. We can increase the odds of connection - and by extension decrease the odds of a person damaging or vacating the apartment unit - by actively and intentionally engaging in place-making.
Place-making capitalizes on a person's assets, inspiration and potential. The intention is to use the apartment and surrounding neighbourhood to promote health, happiness and well-being. Here are four ideas to increase the effectiveness of place-making.
Choice
Choice is critical to place-making. Even in tight rental markets, people need to make informed choices on the neighbourhoods and type of apartment they want to dwell within. This doesn't mean choice is carte blanche. There are realities that need to be faced when it comes to affordability, for example, but choosing a place for a person or forcing them to live in a neighbourhood or type of apartment they do not want will not increase their connection to place.
Choice is also fundamental to furnishings. By giving people the ability to pick out their own furnishings rather than providing them a set collection of furnishings increases their connection to the furnishings and the place.
Move In
On the day of move in the support worker should be present at the time the program participant receives their keys. The first words out of the support worker's mouth as they enter the unit should exude positivity, focusing on positively reinforcing the features, qualities and/or location of the unit and why it is a great place.
On the day of move in, the support worker should also assist in cleaning the apartment. This does not make the support worker a maid service. By being proximate, the support worker sees first hand what skills and strengths the person has when it comes to cleaning and maintaining an apartment. When it comes to place-making, ensuring the apartment is clean at time of move-in increases pride and dignity of having the apartment.
Orientation to Building and Surrounding Community
Leaving the program participant on their own to explore the building and community that they have moved into is a missed opportunity for the support worker to increase place-making. By doing the orientation with the program participant there is the opportunity to reinforce features and benefits to the building and community, and help anchor the person to their new surroundings. Positive reinforcement goes a long way to helping people feel a connection to space and place - from where a person collects their mail to a nearby park where they can relax and enjoy the sunshine.
Create a Personal Guest Policy
Shortly after move-in, the support worker should assist the program participant in creating a personal guest policy. Think of it as the Rules of the House. The purpose of the guest policy is to outline things like when people are allowed to visit, what sorts of activities they want or do not want happening in their apartment, and to proactively think of whether they want visitors to touch their things, eat their food or consume their beverages. These aren't the rules of the support worker, so there must be caution in how the support worker reinforces and encourages the writing of the rules. You want to assist the program participant to see this as "My Own Rules."
Interventions vs General Service
In program evaluations and job shadowing as of late, I have seen many very busy frontline workers. In almost all instances they are very well intentioned, dedicated, compassionate people who are trying to make a difference. They are also, in many instances, overwhelmed by the demands of their caseload and the litany of intrusions on their time. No doubt they are busy. But are they effective? How busy a person is should not be confused as a metric of effectiveness.
At the core, what is occurring is the provision of a general service, not a service intervention. More than semantics, the two constructs are quite different.
In a service intervention, three conditions need to be met:
1. There is deliberate action. One might say this is very targeted. The staff are intentionally engaging a smaller group of people with purpose and predetermined objectives rather than waiting for people to come to them or being taken off-track by intrusions or crises of other.
2. There is interference. This sounds negative, so let me explain because it is actually a positive. The worker is intentionally trying to interfere with the homelessness of the client. They are trying to disrupt it. They want it to change. This interference is strength-based and person-centered, but is not person-directed. In other words, there is intention behind the engagement to help move the person forward. It is not coercive nor does it have a hidden agenda. But the worker commits to challenging the status quo. Put another way, the worker is not trying to manage a person's homelessness, they are trying to end it.
3. There is persuasion. This is the only tool the worker should employ to help the client consider and act upon an alternate reality to their homelessness. One would expect to see strong motivational interviewing practices and occasionally some assertive engagement. One would expect to see persistence, patience and creativity in the worker rather than expressions of absolutes. The interactions would be devoid of opinions and advice.
It is easy to get distracted by the "busyness" of the work rather than focusing on the effectiveness of the work. It is a deliberate choice to be intervention driven. It can mean saying no to a number of other distractions. A focus on interventions in service is a commitment to work with a smaller group of people intentionally rather than a larger group of people peripherally. Especially in a shelter or outreach environment that can be a difficult decision to practice in that way because demands seem to outpace supply of personnel. But if you have a large volume of contacts but are ending homelessness for very few of them, is that really the best use of time?
Unique Individuals & Length of Stay
My mind has been blown twice this month looking at shelter data.
The push that many of us have been trying to make is to know the people touching in your system of care by name, and to cross reference those same people by shelters, outreach, and other services, as well as your By Name List or Priority List. In the case of assembling priority lists for coordinated entry, as David Tweedie on the OrgCode team has pointed out before, once you dig into the data to look at it by people that touch your system rather than people on your list, you will quickly see that there are a number of people in your shelters or served by outreach that have not been assessed and therefore are unlikely to end up on a priority list for housing. Who you are serving and who you are housing may be two different groups.
But back to having my mind blown with shelter data.
In Community A - a city of over 500,000 people - as is the case of many communities, they ran their shelter data by shelter stays in 2017. What did they find?
Number of shelter stays 3,695
Average length of stay 12 days
Median length of stay 3 days
% people who leave before 14 days 79%
% people who stay 180+ days. 0.4%
Then they ran the SAME data but by unique individuals, and a whole different picture emerged. What did it show?
Number of unique individuals with shelter stays 408
Average length of stay cumulatively 114 days
Median length of stay cumulatively 87.5 days
% people who leave before 14 days cumulatively 9%
% people who stay 180+ days cumulatively 21%
Say what? Shelter stays painted a picture we are all familiar with - a large volume of short stays. Unique individuals resulted in a completely different understanding of the data. Once you started to understand cumulative engagement the world of sheltering looked completely different.
Bewildered, I had the chance to have Community B - a city of just shy of 300,000 people - run the same type of report just to make sure Community A was not an anomaly. What did they find?
Number of shelter stays 1,888
Average length of stay 14 days
Median length of stay 4.5 days
% people who leave before 14 days 83%
% people who stay 180+ days 0.8%
Like Community A, Community B then ran the data by unique individuals, and again a whole different picture emerged. What did it show?
Number of unique individuals with shelter stays 211
Average length of stay cumulatively 106 days
Median length of stay cumulatively 91.5 days
% people who leave before 14 days cumulatively 8%
% people who stay 180+ days cumulatively 26%
I am scratching my head. I want to see more data on unique shelter users versus shelter stayers. Is it coincidence that two communities in a row that I had contact with this month ran data that runs contrary to how we generally think shelters operate? Or were these legitimately outliers and the norm is something different? Would love to know what happens in your community when you run your data by unique individuals...let me know. We may be on to something here.
A Response to Iain’s Letter to His Younger Self
From time to time, Ann Oliva is taking over my blog as part of her Leader in Residence role with OrgCode. Despite having different leadership styles and career trajectories, Ann and I share a passion for cultivating leaders in the pursuit of ending homelessness and in leadership driven by values. I hope you enjoy reading Ann's guest blog as much as I did.
Last March, Iain wrote a blog post called "A Letter to Myself of 15 Years Ago" that I found particularly compelling for both the similarities and differences in our leadership experiences. I bookmarked the post with the vague idea that I might one day have the chance to respond with my own thoughts. I figure now is my chance.
Dear myself of 15 years ago –
Hi Ann. I have been thinking a lot lately about what advice I might give you as you find new ways to work towards your goals and dreams. You are stubborn and I am not sure if you will even take this advice – and to be honest I am not sure that you should. The journey I took is the one that made me who I am today – as you know I am a big believer in learning something from each and every experience you have, good and not-so-good. But I do think I have some important things to remind you of as you take that same journey.
I know you haven’t realized it yet, but you are a natural leader. Your willingness to raise your hand and challenge the status quo even when the hand you raise shakes, your ability to think through solutions based on a core set of values that don’t waver, and your desire to take risks when it makes sense will put you in a position to lead down the road. You will have obstacles ahead that make you question your role, your value and your impact. There will be days when you ask yourself just what the hell you are doing. Do not let those situations deter you. I know that you are a bit reluctant to embrace a role that puts you at the center of attention. You like to work behind the scenes, making things happen and letting others be the face of the work. That’s ok, but eventually you will need to step out and communicate with your team, your community, your stakeholders in a way that explains the why and the how of the work you create. Practice in smaller settings and work your way up to larger groups. Find a communication style that works for you and stick with it.
Learn everything you can from each and every leader you meet and work with. Learn what parts of his or her style work for you, and maybe more importantly tuck away in the back of your mind the things that you don’t think work – things that made you feel small or not valued by someone in a position of authority. Don’t do those things.
You are going to make mistakes – small ones and some big ones. This is part of learning and if you are not making at least some mistakes you are not doing it right. Do not let them paralyze you. Accept responsibility for them, apologize if you should, and move on. But be balanced in your approach to mistakes - don’t over-apologize, internalize too intensely, or take responsibility for mistakes that others should own. Accountability should be applied to yourself as well as those around you for it to be meaningful.
Leadership is not about power. If done right, being a leader means you are influencing others in a positive way. Figure out how to use your platform – whether that is with a non-profit serving those experiencing homelessness, or in the federal government, or anywhere in between – to influence those who are both up and down the chain of command. Because you don’t have to be the CEO to be a leader.
Be self-aware enough to see your own shortcomings and find people to have around you that fill those gaps. You are stronger and more effective when you are surrounded by smart, empowered people who share your goals and vision.
Be kind to everyone, but also be firm when you need to and communicate directly as often as possible. Try not to let your passion for the mission spill over into anger when things get tough or frustrating. But being kind does not mean backing down when you know you are right, or allowing yourself to be talked over, put down or insulted. Handle conflict with grace and respect, and others will likely treat you with respect. For those that don’t, be direct but do not expect what they are not willing to give. You learn to work around those people, or through them. Or become their boss.
Each and every relationship you have builds your network, and your network can make or break you as a leader. Be willing to share some of yourself with people, and learn about the lives of those around you. Nurture and tend to your relationships even when you are an introvert who just wants to go home and sit on the couch.
Try not to work every weekend and on vacations. Take a break when you need it, or 15 years down the road you are going to have to take four months off to recover, and it will take two months of that break to even start feeling human again.
One day, at a particularly trying time in your career, you are going to tell a close friend that you want to quit and start working at Pottery Barn to get away from the stress and responsibility that comes with command and leadership. She will turn to you and say – if you work at Pottery Barn you will just end up running Pottery Barn. So you might as well use your inclination towards leadership to have an impact on the thing you are passionate about. She is right. Be grateful for the privilege of leading others in this work that is so important to all of us.
In short, self of 15 years ago, leadership is hard and there is no magic potion that makes the hard stuff easy. But it is worth the effort. Remember to be brave. Never be anything but yourself, but don’t take yourself too seriously. Embrace your natural leadership skills and have some fun with it. See ya in 15 years.
Ann