2011 State of Hawaii Homeless Persons Point-In-Time County Report

Home

are still having trouble making sure that all of their clients are in the HMIS client and intake data by the set deadline. This delays the sheltered analysis. Another area for improvement appears to be the length of homelessness and disability information extracted from the HMIS. This information is often entered at intake and not updated by staff as disabling and length of homeless information becomes clearer. This affects the emergency shelter chronically homeless number, which many agree is underreported. Training may need to be provided on this issue. When analyzing the unsheltered data, several things became apparent. Before entering the unsheltered surveys that have been accumulated during the count, agencies may want to cross reference the surveys with their sheltered HMIS listings in an effort to unduplicate clients. There were a number of individuals and families that were weeded out of the unsheltered count because they appeared in both the sheltered and unsheltered data. Agencies should also make sure that surveys containing sheltered responses for the "where did you sleep on the night of the 25th" question are not entered into the PIT module of the HMIS. The data was much better this year than in prior years. For surveys with no first name and gender, the description should contain information as to whether or not the person was male or female. Some descriptions lacked information pertaining to the gender categorization and had to be marked as unknown. Family and couple "other adult in household" length of homelessness questions in the exported data are set to unknown. The CoC may want to consider adding this question to the other adult in household. This information has been taken to be the same as the head of household and becomes important when tallying the chronically homeless families figure. Question number eight of the single survey was not included in the household survey. Chronic family data assumed this was true when calculating the overall chronic homeless number. Of extreme importance are the exact locations of the interview and the exact locations of where the client slept on the night of the count. This year's count did a good job of getting distinct versus generic interview site responses; however, the location of where the homeless persons slept was general in nature. Many times respondents reported sleeping in a car, tent, at the beach, on the streets, etc. This information becomes a key piece in the analysis because one can pinpoint the exact location of the chronically homeless on that specific night if that data is available. Surveyors did an excellent job of reporting the area ID (1 -7) on the night of the 25th, but it would be great to have more precise locations. This information could be used in a number of cross tabulations that outreach teams could use in the future to locate veterans, chronically homeless, families, unaccompanied youth, etc. Point -in -Time Count Execution PIT Count Coordinators improved on the execution of the count from the previous year. Since effective coordination is imperative when carrying out an unsheltered PIT Count, it is important that enough regional coordinators are assigned to oversee specific areas and that they are aware of their roles and responsibilities to organize the field staff in their areas, provide training on completing the surveys, and to monitor coverage of sites that unsheltered persons are known to congregate. Continued efforts will be made to increase site coverage, especially in the rural areas and to places that serve no -cost meals. In addition, screening surveys that were done on the first day of the count can provide recommendations for improvement that can be implemented during the remaining days of the count. This would assist in increasing the number of surveys providing responses to all or as many questions as possible in order to extract enough data to be included in the count. According to survey coordinators and outreach workers, the overall coordination and execution of the count improved from 2010 to 2011. This year's count made greater efforts to cover places that unsheltered persons are known to congregate, including increasing coverage to places that serve no -cost meals, which may have contributed to more unsheltered persons counted. The implementation of a coordinated "Super Tuesday" count along with continuing the count for the rest of the week provided field staff with more opportunities to encounter unsheltered persons and to revisit sites that are known to be inhabited but may have been sparsely occupied 14