Question 1: Does your by-name list include all young people currently experiencing homelessness including:
A: Young people living on the streets or other places not meant for human habitation
Outreach staff at Rod's House and the Space have mobile outreach teams that do CE/BNL intakes while on outreach; HMIS providers have built good relationships with non HMIS providers.
B: Young people living in shelter, transitional housing or other time-limited settings
Young people in housing services have already done a CE assessment and are therefore captured on the BNL; The Yakima team has built a system where CE assessors do assessments onsite at local shelters, eliminating the barrier of having to seek out a CE assessment to be reflected on the BNL .
C: Young people living in unsafe or unstable situations (see “Key Terms”)
Rods house and Space are doing enrollments for all YYA entering programs; have a Street Outreach Services program and a Homeless Student Stability program that conduct outreach with this population; 15 school districts have signed MOUs, agreeing to refer eligible young people to services; Created a new CE access point (ACI Coordinator) to do assessments, enroll onto the BNL and connect unstably housed YYA to services.
Question 2: Does your homelessness system have specific protocols for coordinating with other key systems to quickly and accurately identify young people within those systems who are experiencing homelessness (as defined in “Key Terms”), including: (In other words, are young people experiencing homelessness who are presenting to these systems quickly identified as such?)
A: Your child welfare system?
Providers associated with ACI are formally invited to 17.5 meetings, which SOS folks are participating in to build relationships with young people in case young people become homeless at some point upon exit; DCYF staff are identifying young people at risk of homelessness and who may be discharged into homelessness or an unstable situation and know the referral process.
B: Local school districts?
McKinney Vento Liaisons are required to identify young people experiencing homelessness and provide them services; OSPI data shows that all districts do collect information on whether a student is unaccompanied.
C: Your juvenile justice system?
State: Juvenile Rehabilitation Representative is ensuring young people don't exit into homelessness, and if they become homeless after release, the Rep is tracking that and will refer to ACI Coordinator; State level MOU.
County: If a youth is exiting county Juvenile Justice with no one to pick them up, staff will have to call DCYF, and DCYF is prepared to refer young people who don't screen into DCYF services to Rod's House; meetings with county Juvenile justice staff to solidify or streamline this process are ongoing.
D: Inpatient behavioral health?
Yakima Neighborhood Health Serivces (YNHS) identifies if young people are experiencing housing instability and use HMIS directly; they are well connected with and receive referrals regularly from other behavioral health providers.
Question 3: Does your homelessness system have specific protocols in place for coordinating with other key systems to ensure that young people in those systems experiencing homelessness (as defined in “Key Terms”) are accounted for on your by-name list, including:
A: Your child welfare system?
DCYF discharge staff know who to refer to for street outreach services if young people are going to be discharged into homelessness, and are connecting with providers via 17.5 meetings so that homelessness can be prevented; referrals can be made directly to service providers or CE access points.
B: Local school districts?
15 school districts have signed an MOU that identifies the process for making referrals to the homelessness system, and Liaisons have been trained on the process for referring; Yakima set up a fourth, YYA-specific CE access point (ACI Coordinator) to be able to do CE/BNL intakes remotely or in-person with YYA from schools and other systems; Street outreach programs in Yakima have been holding regular meetings with Liaisons to build relationships, including through the new Homeless Student Stability Program - this has been working to the point where Liaisons are actively seeking out outreach services; the core team recently added higher education representatives to the core team.
C: Your juvenile justice system?
State: Juvenile Rehabilitation Rep is ensuring young people don't exit into homelessness, and if they become homeless after release, the Rep is tracking that will refer to ACI Coordinator/CE access point; DYCF/Juvenile Justice and AWHWA are in the process of developing a state-level MOU which will pave the way to solidify this process beyond the personal connection .
County: If a youth is exiting county Juvenile Justice (JJ) with no one to pick them up, staff will have to call DCYF, and DCYF is prepared to refer young people who don't screen into DCYF services to Rod's House; meetings with county JJ staff to solidify or streamline this process are ongoing.
D: Inpatient behavioral health?
YNHS identifies if young people are experiencing housing instability and use HMIS directly; they are well connected with and receive referrals regularly from other behavioral health providers.
Question 4: Is your community able to track young people exiting the foster care system without stable housing and to ensure that those individuals are added to your by-name list if they are experiencing homelessness (as defined in “Key Terms”)?
Providers will attend 17.5 meetings and stay in contact with YYA at risk of experiencing homelessness.
Question 5A: Is 100% of your community’s geography covered by a documented and coordinated outreach system?
Between YNHS, Rod's House and all the system outreach that has been done the full county is now covered, including the Lower Valley; these outreach teams have have connections with other hot teams.
Question 5B: Are young people with lived experience of homelessness involved in conducting your outreach and/or informing your outreach strategies and locations?
YYA with lived experience are part of Rods House's Outreach team, and that team is enrolling people onto the BNL; Yakima created a YAB and also has a Mockingbird Chapter, creating a strong foundation for ongoing youth engagement.
Question 6A: Are there youth-specific access points where young people can seek housing and services and be added to your by-name list without having to present at an adult shelter or facility?
ACI Coordinator (systems CE access point), Rod's House, the Space
Question 6B: Do you regularly collect feedback from young people experiencing homelessness to identify barriers to accessing your system and address them?
Yakima has a YAB that wants to take on the role of collecting feedback from other YYA system-wide; the Space and Rod's house get feedback on barriers and survey YYA accessing their programs regularly.
Question 6C: Does the feedback you receive from young people indicate that they are able to access your system in an environment or through a mechanism where they feel safe, respected and comfortable?
Surveys above indicate that young people feel safe, respected and comfortable.
Question 7: Does your community use a youth-specific assessment tool to determine homeless status, triage housing and service needs, and support prioritization based on youth-specific needs and vulnerabilities?
Using a case conferencing model with documented priority for YYA as a category.
Question 8A: What percentage of federally or publicly funded providers (including CoC Program funded providers and RHY providers) serving unaccompanied youth report data into your by-name list?
Over 90% - Have multiple CE access points, some of whom are mobile and covering all of Yakima (see ACI Coordinator’s Chart); because the BNL is built out of CE and not HMIS, Yakima has also developed specific processes to ensure those accessing shelters where not everyone may have done a CE assessment are able to be reflected on the BNL, including having mobile CE assessors do on-site assessments and double checking the BNL data with a Looker report from the Department of Commerce.
Question 8B: What percentage of non-federally or publicly funded providers serving unaccompanied youth report data into your by-name list?
Mobile CE access points cover non-CE providers; staff person doing referral actively tries to contact young people before they are moved to inactive.
Question 8C: If you have at least 90% of providers reporting data into your by-name list regardless of funding source, which choice below best describes the approximate percentage of young people currently experiencing homelessness who are served by these providers?
8A+8B=8C
Question 9A: Has your community established a written inactivity policy that: Specifies the number of days of inactivity (i.e. period of time during which the young person cannot be located) after which a person’s status will be changed to “inactive” and do you continue to attempt to to locate the individual before they are moved to inactive status?
60 Days; see policy
Question 9B: Takes into account young people residing in institutions, who have been there 90 days or longer?
See Policy
Question 10: Does your by-name list have a way to account for young people experiencing homelessness who have not consented to services and/or assessment?
For non-consenters they collect case manager initials, birth year, and client initials as documented in the MOU; This is enough unique points to de-identify clients and has been working in terms of de-identifying clients.
Question 11: Does your community have policies and protocols in place for keeping the youth section of your by-name list up to date and accurate, including timelines for data submission from providers and ongoing quality assurance protocol?
CE provider team and Policy team meet 2x per month to oversee this; smaller sub-committee starting to meet to do intensive data quality checks.
Question 12: Does your community have the necessary data sharing protocols in place to coordinate with systems and providers who may identify minor youth experiencing homelessness to allow data to be collected and shared for the purposes of resolving their homelessness?
YYA in WA state can consent at 13 to share data without parental permission.
Question 13A: Does your community collect race/ethnicity data from young people experiencing homelessness in a culturally appropriate and responsive way?
Yakima is lobbying to expand race and ethnicity categories at Commerce; staff are trained to be culturally competent and ask this question in an appropriate way; Rod's House tries to hire those with lived experience of homelessness.
Question 13B: Does your community collect data on LGBTQ+ status from young people experiencing homelessness in a culturally appropriate and responsive way?
Sexual Orientation is now a universally collected data element and Commerce has made that change in the system; shifted the intakes to combine CE and BNL so young people are only asked those invasive questions once; have done SOGIE trainings and are continuing to do them.