November 2020 Agency Admin Meeting

Date: Thursday, November 5th, 2020
Time: 2:00PM– 3:30PM
Place: ZOOM Only Meeting

Agency Admin. Lead and/or Representative in Attendance:

Slides from the presentation are here:

Please use this link to download slide deck if desired. 

Agenda

• CoC|Coordinated Assessment|UPLIFT Updates

• HIC/PIT Updates

• LSA Updates

• HMIS Newsletter

• New Coordinated Entry (CE) Reports

• Potential DEW Topics 

• Agency Manager Access Role

• Guest Speaker – Who’s Interested?

• Clarity Connect 

• Security Checklist

• Updates/Reminders

• Next Months Meeting

CoC|Coordinated Assessment Updates

CoC membership meeting was held on 10/12.  Notes from the meeting will be posted this week.  Membership meetings are held twice annually and at the October meeting the membership nominated two individuals for the CoC board to consider for board membership.  The board has not yet acted on the nominated members.

Upcoming meetings:

• The Coordinated Assessment Workgroup Meeting , Thursday, November 12, 2020 1:00 PM-2:30 PM
• Service Providers Network Meeting, Wed, November 18th, 9:30am – 11:00am

COVID-19 Response       

• • Transmission among the homeless community continues to be lower than the general population.  Thank you all for your efforts to protect our community!
  • If clients you are working with need isolation and quarantine support due to testing positive or being exposed to a positive individual, please contact the hotline.  Isolation and quarantine support is also available for clients who are housed and need support to isolate at home.
  • Teams operating the hotel sites are working with clients on re-housing strategies and there will be a rapid rehousing push in the coming months.

Community Plan progress

• • The CoC is tracking progress towards the community plan targets and will report back at a future meeting.
  • We are still asking cities and agencies to endorse the plan and identify agency actions that will advance the strategies and help us meet the community-wide goals. 

CoC NOFA

• • Still no update from HUD on the CoC competition for 2019.

UPLIFT Updates

If there are changes who your UPLIFT Point of Contact is – please inform us @ UPLIFT@hhs.sccgov.org

For all UPLIFT related inquiries please email UPLIFT@hhs.sccgov.org

HIC/PIT Updates

What is the Point-in-Time Count?

All jurisdictions receiving federal funding to provide housing and services for homeless populations through McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Grant are required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to conduct a biennial Point-in-Time count of unsheltered and sheltered homeless individuals and families.  The count must happen within the last ten days of January and all data must be tied to one night.

Why does the Point-in-Time Count matter?

Point-in-Time Count data are the primary data used for federal funding allocations and national estimates of homelessness. The numbers reported by your community are used by the US Interagency Council on Homelessness and all federal departments including Housing and Education. PIT Count numbers are also most often cited by local strategic plans, state, county and city government and the media.

The PIT Count will be different in 2021 in a few ways:

• • To follow Covid-19 safety guidelines we will be pre-assigning tracts to outreach and volunteer teams before the day of count instead of assigning them at deployment locations

• Using a mobile app to count homeless individuals

• • Community involvement and participation is critical – we look forward to your input and suggestions to make this a successful PIT Count

• If you have any questions or did not get an invitation to the meeting please contact Leila Qureishi at the Office of Supportive Housing – leilaqureishi@hhs.sccgov.org

Please join us for our November Planning Committee Meeting for the 2021 Point-in-Time Homeless Census and Survey which will take place on:

Tuesday and Wednesday, January 26-27, 2021.

We will be discussing the survey at the November meeting so please come prepared to discuss questions that may be no longer relevant, and questions you would like to see added or possibly removed.

 Here is the zoom information:

Topic: Nov 2020 PIT Count Planning Committee

Time: Nov 17, 2020 01:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

 Join Zoom Meeting

https://sccgov-org.zoom.us/j/94111333515

LSA Updates

• LSA 2019 and 2020 have been uploaded to HDX 2.0 and have been accepted
• LSA 2019 and 2020 have been submitted; we should receive within the next few weeks a report of items that require data quality clean-up
• Please be prepared to receive emails requesting your assistance in any clean-up that we are not able to do 
• As we know more, we will keep you posted

• DEADLINE: 11/27/2020 to submit the LSA

HMIS Newsletter

Santa Clara HMIS News, October 2020

Welcome to the Santa Clara County HMIS Newsletter! In this edition you’ll find the following:

• New Coordinated Entry Reporting Features
  
• Report Spotlight: Program Details Report
  
• Upcoming Events
  
• Bitfocus is Hiring (bitfocus.com)

Web link to the newsletter

New Coordinated Entry (CE) Reports

New Reports Now Available: 6 new reports available all related to coordinated entry assessments and referrals. 

Please note embedded links with more detailed information. 

1. [OUTS-108] CE Demographics Report
2. [GNRL-404] CE Assessment Details Report
3. [GNRL-405] CE Assessing Staff Report
4. [RFRL-103]   Referral Statistics (inbound)

   • This report provides counts of the referrals received by your agency, and shows counts by “status” such as:  pending, in-process, denied, expired, including the number of days since referral.

5. [RFRL-104]  Referral Statistics (outbound)
6. [RFRL-122]   CE Community Queue Detail

Potential DEW Topics?

If you didn’t already know, the DEW are data engagement workshops that consist of a series of training opportunities and development of learning materials for the CoC and community partners. The goal is to help staff at all levels enhance their understanding of the data collected in HMIS, how to measure program performance, and how to use data to effectively communicate the success of your programs.

Past Workshops Include: 

• Getting Started with Looker: Exploring Looks to Support Data Entry

• Taking a Closer Look at Looker Dashboards & Reports in Clarity

• Data Done Right: Data Quality vs. Data Accuracy

• Our Friend, Excel

• How To Tell Your Story

• How to Request Data (How to Monitor Your Data)

• Panning for Data Requests

• HMIS Data In Action

• HMIS Starter Kit 

• Demographics – A Deep Dive to Understanding & Presenting Demographic Information

Please be sure and share in any ideas you may have about potential topics you think we should consider for upcoming workshops. You can use the Virtual Suggestion Box or email us at scc-admin@bitfocus.com.

Agency Manger Access Role

• Agency Manager Role is reserved for Agency Leads

• Notification went out to staff that were not listed as an Agency Lead, who had Agency Manager Role 

• If staff was not an Agency Lead, Agency Staff Access Role was provided

• Requesting Staff access? Check out the different type of Access Roles here. 

Guest Speaker – Who’s Interested?

As a guest speaker you can share with the rest of the group the array of services provided by your agency

Provide insight on Data Quality practices you have in place as it pertains to HMIS

You will be provided a list of different potential topics and/or ideas you can share

Want to recommend someone? Please use the Virtual Suggestion Box or send an email to us at scc-admin@bitfocus.com.

Bitfocus Clarity Connect

Checkout Our Virtual Conference here!

Security Checklist

SCC HMIS Quarterly Compliance Certification Checklist 

Due for each agency by January 31st, 2020

Reminders

Be sure to Update Contact Information in HMIS

1. Log into HMIS
2. Click on the logo of your initials and/or photo 
3. Got to ACCOUNT SETTINGS
4. In the Phone Number field please update your phone number, be sure to include your extension

SAVE CHANGES when done

Office Hours

Conducted from the comfort of your own office! Each Office Hours session is hosted online by your Santa Clara County Clarity System Administration team. You can connect using your computer (recommended so that you can see demos and post questions) and/or dial in by phone using the Zoom links provided below.  

Where Are Office Hours Held?

Looker Office Hours

When:  Every other Monday of the month from 2:00pm-3:00pm

Zoom Link: https://bitfocus.zoom.us/j/94622680152

Clarity (HMIS) Office Hours

When: Every other Thursday  from 10:00am-11:30am 

Zoom Link: https://bitfocus.zoom.us/j/617946839

SCC Clarity HMIS Training Site

Want to hone your skills at data entry without compromising actual client data? 

Use the End User Clarity HMIS Training Site

SCC Virtual Suggestion Box

We value your opinion and insight. Please share with us your suggestions by using our new SCC Virtual Suggestion Box. You can access it by using the link above or directly from the HMIS Support page under the CONTACT tab and scrolling to Virtual Suggestion Box option.

Next Agency Admin Meeting

Meeting Location: Zoom Link

When: Thursday, December 3rd, 2020

Time: 2:00pm – 3:30pm

Dates and locations for 2020 meetings are listed on the OSH website:

https://www.sccgov.org/sites/osh/continuumofcare/osh-events/pages/home.aspx

Bitfocus Contact Information

Support Team: sccsupport@bitfocus.com

Bitfocus System Administration Team: scc-admin@bitfocus.com 

Trevor Mells (trevorm@bitfoucs.com)

Alison Wilson (alisonw@bitfocus.com)

Lesly Soto (leslys@bitfocus.com)