PHASE 1: Quality, real-time and person specific data
We work with Anchor Communities to establish a By Name List (BNL) of all young people experiencing homelessness in their community and ensure that this is real time, quality data.
Team structure: Communities bring together a Core Team that includes at least two youth and young adults with lived experience of homelessness. Meeting bi-monthly, this team is the main implementation team for ACI work and includes an ACI Coordinator, Team lead, data lead, partners from child welfare, schools, juvenile justice, behavior health and local providers. Communities also create a Community Team of broader stakeholders who need to stay engaged and bought in to the work.
The work: The BNL Scorecard is comprised of 43 yes-no questions that help ensure communities have the partnerships, infrastructure, and protocols in place for their system to track, in real time, all of the unaccompanied youth and young adults between the ages of 12-24 experiencing homelessness in their community. While completing the BNL Scorecard, communities simultaneously submit monthly system level data (inflow, actively homeless and outflow) to build and troubleshoot their system-level data infrastructure. Communities start working on this early on so that they can move quickly into the next phase. In order to reach quality, real-time data, communities must complete the Scorecard and reach a data reliability threshold of 15%.
The result: By the end of this phase of work, communities should have a high degree of confidence that their BNL includes all unaccompanied youth and young adults (age 12-24) in their community experiencing sheltered, unsheltered and doubled up/couchsurfing homelessness. They are regularly submitting monthly system data from their BNL, including race/ethnicity, age, sexual orientation and gender identity. At least two young people with lived experience are stipended to attend meetings and communities are establishing youth action boards or similar structure to set the stage for deeper YYA leadership and engagement.
Tools:
Question-by-Question tools and resources (eg. example MOUs, inactivity policies from communities) on the Resource Hub
PHASE 2: Reducing Youth and Young Adult Homelessness
Once a community achieves quality data, we shift our coaching support and focus to reducing the number of youth and young adults on the BNL month-by-month. Teams use data to set goals for progress and identify strategies to improve outcomes around those goals. This includes strategies to address inflow (preventing YYA from becoming homeless) and reducing the numbers of people experiencing active homelessness (strategies to increase permanent, stable housing).
Team structure: Communities should ensure that their Core Team has the right members in place for the reducing phase, which may depend on the goals the team sets for themselves. This may require reassessing the team and inviting new members to join. During the reducing phase, at least two young people are attending core team meetings as full members. Furthermore, communities ensure that they have a body of young people outside of the Core Team (eg. Youth Action Board) to choose some improvement projects that the Core Team implements.
The work: Using quality real-time data from their BNLs, communities utilize continuous quality improvement to test system changes and improvements that reduce inflow and increase housing placements month-by-month. Communities begin by choosing a reducing process measure (outlined below), learning how to run Plan Do Study Act (PDSA) cycles, and incorporating race/LGBTQ+ equity. Progress is tracked through gathering baseline data, locking in an improvement median, setting weekly, bi-weekly or monthly goals, and tracking progress through run charts. During this phase, communities will also need to set up backend data infrastructure to align measurement with the USICH benchmarks.
Examples of reducing process measures:
Decreasing unsheltered young people (to zero)
Increasing permanent housing placements
Decreasing returns from housing into homelessness
Decreasing the average length of time from identification to permanent housing
Using an equity focus involves delving more deeply into both quantitative and qualitative data: disaggregating for different populations and intersectional identities, finding root causes of disproportionality and systemic inequity, and setting specific, time-bound improvement goals. Communities will also be trained on anti-racism and racial equity to ensure a baseline competency.
A key “reducing strategy” is the Centralized Diversion Fund which will be operational in communities in Fall 2020.
Tools:
Project Portfolio Tool
Additional weekly, bi-weekly or monthly data collection and analysis, including further disaggregation of race/ethnicity and other demographics
PHASE 3: Ending Youth and Young Adult Homelessness
Reaching the ACI definition of functional zero which includes ending disproportionality for young people of color and LGBTQ+ young people.