OVERVIEW:
What is Case Conferencing: Case Conferencing is a way to strategize around the needs of everyone on your BNL to get them connected and moved into appropriate housing by bringing key partners together to problem-solve and identify key actions to get those most vulnerable quickly housed.
Role of Case Conferencing in Ending Homelessness: While the primary objective for Case Conferencing is to house people faster, it also allows you to coordinate and streamline efforts, and to use individual data points to evaluate the needs/gaps and troubleshoot process improvements across the housing system. It is a critical tool on the path towards ending homelessness.
Case Conferencing is action-oriented and specific to getting people housed. It is not intended to provide ‘status’ updates on participants or to coordinate ‘care’. It is about finding housing solutions for those who are prioritized on your BNL.
JUST STARTING CASE CONFERENCING?
HERE ARE SOME KEY TIPS, RECOMMENDATIONS & RESOURCES:
Outline the steps you need to take in order to launch your first Case Conferencing meeting
Case Conferencing Webinar: Want info on the basics? Need to understand the high-level concepts around Case Conferencing - why we do it, the purpose and benefit, who should be there, etc.? Watch this webinar to hear about best practices and lessons learned. [Slides from webinar]
Walla Walla’s Mural for Launching Case Conferencing: The Walla Walla Core Team facilitated this exercise to identify the steps needed to successfully launch case conferencing in their community.
Identify the most important participants, frequency of meetings, and key roles: Attendees should be those who are actively working with young people in your community who are experiencing homelessness (outreach workers, navigators, shelter/housing providers) along with your CE staff and/or BNL coordinator.
Determine your Case Conferencing core values and set a tone and/or expectations (agreements) for how folks should engage in the space. Setting ground rules, housing first values, and centering young people’s strengths are all important components, as well as your policy on confidentiality and information sharing.
Spokane’s Case Conferencing Agreement: Spokane created this case conferencing agreement for providers to review and sign prior to attending their first case conferencing session. This is reviewed at each meeting to ground providers in the purpose and goals of case conferencing.
Set a goal for your case conferencing:
Goals of your Case Conferencing could be things like housing your 20 longest stayers, or focusing on your top 30 highest needs YYA. It could be prioritizing unsheltered YYA or those who continue to be ‘skipped’ or unable to be matched to a housing resource.
Example Youth Case Conferencing goal, scope, roles & expectations: NWCoC Case Conferencing
Example Case Conferencing process: Big Bend CC Overview
Example meeting agenda: YYA Case Conferencing Agenda & Expectations - SKC
Stay focused and prioritize action: Use a template to track progress, meeting notes and next steps; Keep the focus of the meeting on case conferencing (don’t do anything else in the meeting).
See Mock BNL for Case Conferencing Template for an example of how to manage your BNL and track progress and next steps during each meeting.
Example Case Conferencing agenda
Set a time limit for discussion of each person and stick to it:
Predetermine how many people you will discuss each meeting (i.e. the top 20 YYA on the list)
Commit to spending a specific amount of time (i.e. 1-3 minutes) talking about each YYA
WANT TO MAKE YOUR CASE CONFERENCING EVEN BETTER?
HERE ARE SOME BACK POCKET IMPROVEMENTS TO CONSIDER TRYING:
Focus on system barriers rather than YYA problems: If you find that team members are constantly highlighting problems with young people that make them hard to house, try re-framing that into asking yourselves ‘what is wrong with the system that keeps us from housing this young person?
Set goals and targets to focus on in your Case Conferencing: For example, setting target move-in dates helps your team learn which actions move clients forward.
Debrief your meeting to identify change ideas: Invite 3-4 ACI team members who also attend case conferencing to spend 15 minutes after the meeting to do a quick debrief. Discuss what system barriers came up that the ACI team may need to strategize around and who will bring them up in the next meeting. Some framing questions might be:
Who couldn’t we house today (or for the past few case conferencing sessions)?
Are we noticing disproportionality here? What do we suspect is the source?
What were their common barriers?
What should we tell the ACI team about this?
Ensure that every participant shares a sense of purpose. Everyone attending the Case Conferencing meeting should know exactly what their role is in coming to the table. They should walk away with action steps and a clear understanding of what was accomplished in the meeting and what needs to happen next (and by whom).
Diversion First: Add a column to your notes labeled ‘date of last diversion conversation’ and always explore creative/alternative solutions.
Keep the conversation solutions oriented (limit complaining): It is common for case conferencing meetings to lose their purpose, for actions to fall off, and for people to start complaining more. If you notice this happening, stop and reset with the group!
Acknowledge frustrations that come up, then redirect by helping come up with one thing they can try between now and the next meeting to get the person housed/address the immediate barrier.
Ask more questions – dig deeper to find out what is causing the frustration/challenge and come up with solutions to address.
See Community Solution’s Facilitator’s Guide to Transforming Team Culture for more concrete tips.
Strategizing for Change: Case Conferencing: This session focused on using Case Conferencing as a tool for Core Teams to identify needed system changes and areas of improvement. Watch this webinar for ideas on how to take your case conferencing to the next level!
OTHER HELPFUL RESOURCES:
Many of these ideas above have been developed by the Built For Zero team at Community Solutions, and their tool bank is a GOLDMINE!
Built for Zero Case Conferencing Tool Bank (This link includes an incredible bank of Case Conferencing resources - things like: How to launch your CC, how to track data, etc.