At the 2007 HMIS Grant Administration Training conference hosted by HUD in Minneapolis, Minnesota, awards were given to outstanding agencies and individuals in recognition of their innovations in the field. Eleven of the fifteen recipients were ServicePoint users. See below for more information on these award-winning endeavors, or click here for the official press release.
 

Effective Project Management

Michigan's Coalition Against Homelessness (MiCAH)
Michigan’s Coalition Against Homelessness is the lead organization for the Balance of State HMIS Implementation. Barbara Ritter leads MiCAH’s HMIS staff. Under Barb’s leadership, the Michigan statewide HMIS has successfully launched a variety of initiatives designed to support partnerships with mainstream and private providers. MiCAH has also designed reports that have allowed agencies, CoCs and the State alike to easily organize data for reporting, outcome monitoring, and system-wide analysis.

Wendy Smith, Bureau of Housing & Community Development, Portland, Oregon
Ms. Smith manages a 3-county HMIS implementation that includes more than 700 users. She's been with the HMIS implementation for just over 1 year, and in that period, she's made HMIS more accessible and user friendly for providers, has increased coverage dramatically, and has integrated Portland’s 10 Year Plan reports among others into HMIS. As a result of Wendy Smith’s leadership, the HMIS system is a community resource that is now requested by providers rather than a HUD obligation.


Improving Data Quality

Sarah Graham, Community Information & Referral, Maricopa County, Arizona
Sarah designed 60 different data quality validation reports that that the staffs of provider agencies can run to improve data quality within the Maricopa HMIS Project. The reports include 16 data quality reports that are unique to the AHAR and 3 reports that are unique to the APR. Agencies within the Maricopa HMIS Project have been able to achieve 100% accuracy by using the reports that Sarah has developed.

Partners for the Homeless, Memphis, Tennessee
To help ensure a more accurate understanding of the service needs of homeless families, Partners for the Homeless devised and administered an incentive program to provide monetary rewards for data quality excellence. As a result of the incentive plan: 1) seven out of the ten agencies that serve families with children achieved an overall score of 85% or better, signifying the actual percentage of fields they had accurately entered; 2) aggregate data used for the consolidated plan and shared with mainstream providers and funders were the most accurate and complete to date; and 3) increased data quality gave providers the confidence to share data real-time with one another to ensure more efficient, effective, and highly coordinated service delivery to homeless families and their children.


Increasing HMIS Coverage

Rhode Island Housing, Providence, Rhode Island
The Rhode Island HMIS implementation has 95% of all housing programs on its system in large part because of Rhode Island Housing. Rhode Island Housing requires all funded programs to participate in HMIS, and has worked relentlessly to include all emergency, transitional, SHP, S+C, HOPWA, Community Development Block Grant, and faith based organizations. RI Housing provides HMIS access at no cost to homeless service organizations. RI Housing has also implemented enhanced security measures to ensure that collected confidential client data is maintained at the highest of security levels. In addition, RI Housing provides incentives to participate in HMIS, such as the “50 Computers Give-Away” to non-profit organizations across the state. One award nominator noted, “Without the help of RI Housing, participation wouldn't be where it is today."

Portage/Kalamazoo City and County CoC
Kalamazoo migrated to the Michigan Statewide HMIS (MSHMIS) in mid-2006 nearly doubling the number of participating agencies. Kalamazoo uses the system to creatively partner with the local Health Care for the Homeless Program, tracking prescription coverage for homeless clients and enabling the CoC and the State to have data on the health status of homeless persons. Additionally, the diversity of the implementation is remarkable. It includes the typical mix of HUD/ESG funded prevention, outreach, shelter and housing programs, but also has the County Health Dept, the Community Mental Health Center (Path), the Department of Human Services, a low-income transportation program, the Gospel Mission, and CARES (an AIDS Resource and Education) program. With many mainstream programs on board, Kalamazoo has nearly 80% of all programs that serve people who are homeless participating in HMIS.


Innovative Uses of Technology

Felicia Folmar, Riverside County Department of Public Social Services
For the 2006 homeless count the Riverside County Department of Public Social Services equipped two teams, lead by outreach workers familiar with the area, with a Windows Mobile Handheld device (PDA) and a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver. The CoC was ultimately able to overlay the location and time stamp of each homeless individual and family with geographic data in the HMIS system. Using the time stamp and the location values provided higher quality as well as more timely and accurate data. Riverside County was also able to combine the PDA with the HMIS data and search for duplications.


Training Strategies and Techniques

Richard Rankin, Vermont Balance of State HMIS Implementation
Mr. Rankin, the Vermont Balance of State HMIS administrator and member of the New England Regional HMIS collaborative, is responsible for training 50 providers in rural Vermont. Richard holds monthly trainings at his training site, utilizes go-to meeting, and uses one-on-one trainings as needed. Richard’s active participation in NERHMIS has also resulted in some great training products. Most recently he developed tri-state reports for NH, VT, and ME, which were the first of their kind and shared with NERHMIS members for broader use in other New England states. These reports allowed the three states to pull data on the same date from their individual HMISs to produce a regional report. One of Richard’s strategies for HMIS training is to make the system work for each provider. Richard has set up VT’s HMIS to record the relationship between offenders and victims for the VT Department of Corrections, Victim Services. One award nominator noted, “You can always count on Richard to have suggestions to solve problems.”

Washtenaw County HMIS Team
In May 2007, the Washtenaw County HMIS team released a new comprehensive training manual utilizing a new training method designed to help end users learn to use the HMIS system. This "How Do I..." tool includes process flow diagrams, checklists, navigational guides and practice exercises. It is currently used in classroom lab trainings, as a self-paced individual learning tool, and as a reference manual that end users can consult as needed. It is available electronically on the Washtenaw County HMIS Sharepoint portal. Since it is electronically available, users can easily search to find the information they need to use the HMIS system more effectively.


Comprehensive Community Approach to HMIS Implementation

Birmingham/Jefferson/St. Clair, Shelby Counties CoC
From the system administrator level to the provider level, Birmingham Alabama seems to have it all. Valerie Bouriche, the HMIS Coordinator for Birmingham, AL was able to bring participation levels up to 83% of required programs during her first year on the job. Valerie, along with the community, have found creative HMIS solutions to problems that touch the community as a whole, such as photo identification cards that are generated from the HMIS. Birmingham also has knowledgeable front line staff, such as Keyana Lewis, who have been able use the HMIS to assist clients in obtaining SSI or SSDI benefits and help many skeptical chronically homeless clients understand the true benefits of being in HMIS. Deisha Rosser, an effective agency HMIS Administrator, also plays a large part in the success of the implementation. Ms. Rosser encourages staff to enter accurate information on their clients and use HMIS reporting tools to check for any data quality issues on a monthly basis. Birmingham has been blessed with a Continuum that not only works to fulfill the requirements of the funding sources, but also manages the HMIS to be the most effective tool it can be for each participating agency.


Outstanding Support of HMIS Implementation Efforts

Detroit Field Office
The Detroit HUD Field Office provided exceptional technical assistance to an HMIS project in its region. Based on its grant risk analysis, the Detroit FO took initiative and negotiated to reassign the HMIS project from one grantee to Detroit CoC. The Detroit CoC now has HMIS data available to support its Exhibit 1 for SuperNOFA, among other uses. The Detroit FO is very proud of the 32,871 client records that have been entered into the system by the Detroit HMIS collaborative as of August 2007.
 
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