Welcome to our new participants from the West coast in Red Deer, Grande Prairie, and Whitehorse!

Today we talked about:

• APIs and data linkages - lots of partners assume that HIFIS already talks to other systems (like SAMS). Ali does a little overview of what an API is, talked about send/receive functions, and how the software on both ends would need to have an enabling piece to allow this

• Case Management Sessions - Discussion from Red Deer and Chatham about Case Sessions.

• Activity statuses - in ETO (Alberta's current system) there are other Client Statuses - "Unknown" and "Disappeared," so we talked about how that works in HIFIS

• Lindsey reporting about the recent HIFIS Working Group - some discussion about collecting information about disabilities, also supportive housing and recording rent as an expense and subsidies as income.

Slow start today, but the conversation really ramped up. Here are some of the highlights:

• Transitional housing: housed or homeless? We discussed how there was a spectrum of different ways that transitional housing could look, but in HIFIS, we have to make the binary decision of "homeless or housed."

  • See Ali's blog post: https://www.acreconsulting....

• Who ultimately gets to decide what the community's prioritization criteria are? The CE gets the funding and is ultimately responsible, but the CAB gets authority to decide on prioritization. There are some conflicting incentives - supportive housing providers would rather prioritize people with lower acuity, and special interest groups want to prioritize their population.

• What about people being discharged from correctional facilities (or hospital). Should we endeavour to house them immediately (possibly taking resources away from the priority list) so they aren't discharged into homelessness?