Add 'Paper Ready' field to Client Vitals
In my community, clients are considered 'paper ready' when their profile includes three things: ID, a SPDAT conducted in the last 12 months, and proof of income. When a client has these things, it means they are eligible to be matched to a Housing Program.
In addition to uploading information in three different modules (Identification, Documents and SPDAT), users must fill out a custom table indicating the client is paper ready. Information from the checklist is used in our BNL to streamline the matching process. Unfortunately. there is a lot of room for error within this process, and many clients have an inaccurate 'paper ready' status as a result.
I believe most communities have something similar to 'paper readiness' and would benefit from having this information displayed more prominently. It would be extremely useful if this status could be displayed in a prominent place within HIFIS, such as a field on the Client - Vitals page. As HIFIS moves away from a program for booking participants into emergency shelters and towards a program for connecting people to housing, I feel this is an important component.
Also @Jill Clair have you considered on your BNL instead of checking from the Custom Table to see if the clients have ID, document, and VI-SPDAT, just have your report check those original sources? Then your staff won't have to double-enter this information.
@Ali Ryder Our BNL currently pulls SPDAT information from the SPDAT module. A column was just added for when clients have photo ID in the Identification module. The issue with Proof of Income in Documents is that the same naming convention is needed, so a custom table is easier for tracking this information currently. Information from the paper-readiness custom table, the Financial Profile, SPDAT module and now the Identification module are currently reflected in our BNL.
@Jill Clair One thing I've suggested to some communities is because the ID module has a mandatory "type" field and the Document module doesn't, maybe add an Identification type called "Proof of Income Statement."
That's where this idea comes from: https://community.acreconsulting.ca/ideas/3063
Hey @Jill Clair! Thanks for the feedback. I totally agree that this is something that is missing from HIFIS, but respectfully, I think adding a "Paper Ready" field to Client Vitals is the wrong way to go about it.
My next chapter in the HIFIS Improvement Project is on Housing Matching, and I'd love to chat with you when that project gets underway. But in the meantime, some work has been done in the background as part of other improvement projects and I already have an idea for how I think this should work.
In a nutshell: people shouldn't have to double enter things! You indicated that your current process is to 1) add information in three different modules, then 2) fill out a custom table to say that they've done so. You're currently making them double enter things! To fix that problem, your proposal is to add a new field on the Client Vitals, but I see two problems with that:
Either it's a manual field, which means that you're still making people double enter things, but differently, or
HIFIS is hard-coded to put in some rules, and if the rules are true, then the field indicates yes otherwise no.
The problem with the second is that while you indicated that other communities have a similar process, I can say that yes it's similar but definitely not exactly the same. What about communities that don't use the VI-SPDAT, or communities that do use the VI-SPDAT but it has to be in the last 6 months, or there is no time limit on it? Which forms of ID in the identification module are valid? What about communities that don't have proof of income uploaded via the Documents module? I've heard some communities that require proof of residency status, and some communities require clients to have applied for the general social housing waiting list before they're eligible for homeless-specific housing programs. What about Indigenous-specific housing or veteran-specific housing that might require additional documentation?
I've basically come to the conclusion that "document readiness" is a conditional/variable status. Even within the same community, a client might be "document ready" for one unit but not for another one. So I don't think there's a binary way to indicate that this client is definitely document ready or not.
Although I don't have an official proposal at this time, I can share some of the direction I will be proposing: integrating eligibility criteria and document requirements into the Coordinated Access / Housing Search / Matching process.
@Ali Ryder I would be very interested in being involved with this. Would you be able to filter the UIL in the Coordinated Access module based on the eligibility criteria of an available unit?
@Jill Clair Theoretically, that's the plan!