Agency Overview. Lorena D. McDowell, Vice President of Programs - Northern Virginia Family Service

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1 Agency Overview Northern Virginia Family Service (NVFS) is a nonprofit organization with services running the gamut, touching on all of the different social determinants of health. Housing & Homeless Services NVFS programs make up 87% of all shelter beds in PWC through two Rapid Rehousing emergency shelters: SERVE Shelter 92 bed family shelter that serves a small number of singles as well. Located on the North-West side of the county Hilda Barg Homeless Prevention Center - 30 bed family shelter that also serves a small number of singles. Located on the South-East side of the county NVFS owns a handful of affordable housing properties where we act as landlords The agency also administers the Bridging Affordability Program for Fairfax County. Which provides temporary rental subsidy and case management for people with low income.

2 Community Overview Prince William County (PWC) FY17 Point in Time Count Data Total Homeless: 400 Sheltered: 284 Unsheltered: 116 Homeless People in Families: 203 Sheltered: 200 Unsheltered: 3 Homeless Individuals/Singles: 197 Sheltered: 84 Unsheltered: 133

3 A Little Backstory

4 Top Three Things We Learned Shelters are triage! Stop trying to fix every little thing in the shelter. 2. The devil success is in the details Every, single interaction needs to boil down to housing. Period. If you re not talking about housing, you re having the wrong conversation. -Respectfully stolen from Kay Moshier McDivitt 3. There was a lot of work to be done and we would have to fully commit.

5 We dug in! Through a series of regular meetings with Homeless Services leadership, over a 6 month planning period, we completely broke down our shelter programs. What we found was we were pretty good, but we were missing the mark in a few key areas. Barriers that we never thought we could remove Ridiculous intake packets Nonsensical rules Just too much fluff! All of this created clients and staff that were not focused on the prize

6 Old Rules vs Current Expectations Previous Reasons for discharge: Honestly, pretty much anything could be turned into a reason (not that staff took every opportunity). Current Reasons for discharge: Assault or behavior intended to cause physical or emotional harm to another Using or selling drugs ON CAMPUS Abandoning your room (3 days with no contact) No effort shown by guest after staff has exhausted all attempts to motivate guest and after a minimum of 30 days You are ready to move into your new home! We are all adults and we are on the same team. Your success is our success!!!

7 What about safety??? Lowering barriers to shelter entry and decreasing reasons to be discharged will create safety issues, right? Wrong. The top concerns I hear from the community are: Ending criminal background checks will bring people who will do harm to others False. Negative and or potentially dangerous behavior is still addressed Staff should undergo various training to ensure that they are prepared for any situation anyway Child abuse and registry checks still conducted Immigrants will seek refuge there So what??? The shelter will become a drug & alcohol den Negative. These are adults, not our children. We treat behavior, not addiction. Guests will never leave Not the case if you remain focused on housing Length of stay in our shelters did not increase

8 Client Impact & Outcomes After months of work, NVFS fully launched this approach in January. Results are already beginning to show: We are effectively serving those in greatest need Refocused expectations has resulted in less complaints from staff and clients Discontinuation of behavior contracts and ridiculous rules has resulted in less frustrated clients and staff with more time to help them move to housing Length of stay in our shelters for exits to permanent housing has remained stable at 34 days as an average (even without the quick discharges that would kindly skew the numbers in our favor before) Exits to permanent housing are trending at and average increase of approximately 25% this quarter

9 The verdict is IT WORKS!!!* *If you work it. There can be no half-stepping if you want this to work!