Established (1) access points use a standardized (2) assessment process to gather information on people’s needs, preferences, and the barriers they face to regaining housing. Once the assessment has identified the most vulnerable people with the highest needs, the CoC follows established policies and procedures to (3) prioritize households for (4) referral to appropriate and available housing and supportive services resources (“projects”).

1. ACCESS

Access refers to how people experiencing a housing crisis learn that coordinated entry exists and access crisis response services. The first contact that most people experiencing a housing crisis will have with the crisis response system is through a coordinated entry access point. Access points play a critical role in engaging people to address their most immediate needs through referral to emergency services. Access points also play a critical role in beginning to determine (through assessment) which intervention might be most appropriate to rapidly connect those people to housing.

When adopting an access model for its coordinated entry process, a CoC’s planning group must ensure that the model meets the HUD requirements for access, as well as consider the local geography, service patterns, and capacity of its crisis response system. The purpose of designating access points is to ensure that all people in a community have equal access to all crisis response system resources in the CoC. Equal access is an important part of the overall strategy of coordinated entry, which shifts the system from a project-centric focus to a person-centric focus.

2. ASSESSMENT

The assessment practice a CoC implements is critical to that CoC’s overall coordinated entry process because assessment determines how people are prioritized and referred to housing and supportive services projects. In addition to identifying a person’s overall needs and preferences, the assessment also must appropriately triage the person by asking about immediate needs (e.g., “Are you safe where you are right now?” “Do you need medical services?”), accurately evaluating his or her vulnerability and barriers to housing, and providing information to support accurate referrals.

3. PRIORITIZATION

No CoC or community has enough housing and services to immediately serve every person at the exact moment they experience homelessness. Additionally, no community partner has enough resources for every person that they encounter. Communities have always had to prioritize persons for enrollment. These waiting lists have historically been managed separately for each project and are ordered by who had been waiting the longest or who was considered “ready” for housing, not based on who needed it the most within in a housing first framework.

4. REFERRAL

Once a person experiencing a housing crisis has been assessed, the coordinated entry process moves on to determining his or her priority for housing and supportive services. The person’s level of vulnerability or need is determined by analyzing the information obtained from the assessment against the CoC’s prioritization standards. It is the person’s prioritization status (and other information from the assessment) that determines where the person will be referred in the next coordinated entry step. In referral, the group of persons with the highest priority is offered housing and supportive services projects first.

The referral process must ensure that program participants receive clear information about the project they have been referred to, what the project will expect of them, and what they can expect from the project.

KSHC has a “No Wrong Door” policy which is a people-centered solution for human services that provides a universal gateway to community and government programs. There are many locations at which a household may be entered/updated in HMIS.

Since coordinated entry is expected for all households until they find permanent housing, KSHC has created Homeless CES and Prevention CES within HMIS that all relevant agencies can access. Within the Coordinated Entry “Agency” providers can enroll households in a CES “Program.”

Homeless CES and Prevention CES are simply what allow for a boundary to be drawn around the CE segment of HMIS for reporting purposes. As a result, KS BoS CoC is able to track participants’ entire journey through CE – from access to exit – which means communities will have information on how well the CE is performing, and participants’ trauma will be reduced because they do not have to tell their story multiple times throughout assessment phases.

With this approach to CE data collection, communities will have information on all households in a housing crisis who touch the CE process, not just information about people who are served by HMIS-contributing housing and service projects. By enhancing data collection and standardizing data on assessment, prioritization, and referrals, communities can assess CE effectiveness as well as whether the CE is operating with fidelity to its policies and procedures. The data from these elements helps answer critical questions to inform strategies for strengthening communities’ crisis response systems and ability to appropriately target resources:

• Are pathways to housing as fast and effective as they can be?
• Are we successfully diverting people from the system?
• Are we housing the most vulnerable people in our community? Who’s getting left out?
• What resources are needed to end homelessness and where are the gaps?
• Which households touch the system and exit without a homelessness intervention versus those who need our assistance?

Collecting these data also supports management reporting on specific parts of the CE process, such as active client lists, coverage and demand, and permanent housing placements and retention. HUD’s Coordinated Entry Management and Data Guide outlines how communities can use their CE data for monitoring and evaluation.

HUD’s Coordinated Entry Management and Data Guide

https://files.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/coordinated-entry-management-and-data-guide.pdf