TESTIMONY OF KELLY SWEENEY McSHANE TO THE COMMITTEE ON HUMAN SERVICES FOR AN OVERSIGHT HEARING ON THE DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES
February 19, 2009
Good afternoon, Councilmember Chair Wells and members of the Committee on Human Services. My name is Kelly Sweeney McShane, and I am the Executive Director of Community of Hope as well as a continuing member on the Interagency Council on Homelessness. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today regarding my interactions with the Department of Human Services (DHS).
Community of Hope provides housing for homeless families in three different levels of the continuum – temporary shelter, transitional housing, and now permanent housing - as well as providing primary medical, dental, and behavioral health to about 3,500 patients in our federally qualified health center in Adams Morgan.
I would like to testify today regarding Community of Hope’s participation in DHS’s permanent housing initiative for homeless families. COH is one of the four providers that are working with homeless families. On December 22, 2008, we were assigned 24 families to work with. Six (6) come from our Girard Street program, three (3) from Hope Apartments, and six (6) from COH's System Transformation Initiative (STI) program, so we have a continuing relationship with families that we hope will make a transition smoother. Nine (9) families come from other programs in the city. These families were prioritized based on vulnerability and length of time in the system. COH’s model is to work with larger families, providing staffing through a case manager who focuses on the parents’ needs and a youth advocate who focused on the needs of the children.
Since December, we have been ramping up quickly, including hiring new staff. We have worked with families to submit sixteen (16) applications for approval by the DC Housing Authority. Two (2) have been approved by DCHA. COH staff will assist families in identifying housing if they need it (some will stay in their current apartments which are funded with two-year System Transformation Initiative vouchers), as well as providing supportive services after they move in.
COH has also leveraged private funding to hire a Wellness Coordinator to help families navigate the healthcare system, provide health education on chronic diseases, and ensure that health needs are met for children and adults. The Wellness Coordinator is responsible for completing health assessments on every family member and developing resources and teaching strategies to support families in accessing healthcare and in managing chronic health conditions. So far, our Wellness Coordinator has completed twenty-nine (29) initial assessments on eight (8) families (eleven (11) adults and eighteen (18) children).
In addition to the DHS funding, COH also will be serving an additional fifteen (15) families through federal funding from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. We also have an agreement for an additional sixteen (16) families under the DC Housing Authority’s Local Rent Supplement Program (LRSP). The total number of families served by COH in this permanent housing initiative, therefore, will be fifty-five (55).
I have continued to be quite impressed with DHS’s implementation of this program. We meet every two weeks to share information with other providers. DHS staff is dedicated, committed to working together with providers and clients, and flexible to meet client needs and get families into housing as quickly as possible. The big delay has been with the DC Housing Authority and trying to get families eligible and leased up. COH has been particularly frustrated in trying to get its LRSP units up and running, with the result that families we originally targeted for LRSP are now getting housing under DHS. DHS is trying to help us fast track LRSP clients by channeling them through the DHS process.
In conclusion, I urge the Council to continue to support the permanent housing/ housing first initiatives for families through DHS and to work with DHS and the Interagency Council to continue to fund programs that help families to move out of homelessness as quickly as possible.
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