HOMELESS SERVICE NETWORK AGENCY

Homeless Service Network Agency

Homeless Service Network Agency

This paper is based on a selected healthcare agency and the problems it is facing while implementing a coherent program.

By 2003, homeless people in most communities across the United States had access to a much broader array of programs and services than existed even as recently as a decade ago. The availability of federal resources has stimulated much of this expansion, and federal program requirements have also stimulated service coordination. Community experience over the years of developing service networks for currently homeless people has also had an important effect.

Many communities with good service networks have realized that they will never end homelessness as long as all they do is help currently homeless people. The result is an effort to expand prevention activities, develop affordable housing, and devise networks to address the factors that push people into homelessness. To discover what differentiates true systems from loose associations of providers, this entry examines the variety and structure of homeless programs and services, including intake procedures, service linkages, and other “system” aspects of homeless assistance networks, as well as funding fragmentation and other challenges.

The Variety of Programmes And Services

Because client needs are often complex, assembling the appropriate array of services is virtually impossible without the help of a case manager who knows where to find services and how to access them, and who will invest the time needed to work out the best program for each client. Case management can differ in intensity between individual clients and for the same client over time, from as little as a twice-yearly check-in to a daily contact. The services the case manager assembles and coordinates may actually be provided by the staff of homeless specific residential programs, the staff of agencies that specialize in serving homeless people but do not offer shelter or housing, and/or the staff of agencies whose missions extend well beyond serving homeless people.

The Structure of Programs And Services

Two of the most important structural dimensions of programs and services are openness and completeness. An open agency relies on other agencies—public, nonprofit, or for-profit—to supply most or all services. A closed agency uses its own staff and resources to supply virtually everything that clients receive. “Completeness” refers to the extent to which an agency or a network has all the types of services that even the hardest-to-serve client may need. How open and complete the homeless assistance agencies in a community are depends in large part on the degree to which the community's mainstream public agencies—especially its health, mental health, substance abuse, income maintenance, and housing agencies—accept responsibility for homeless people and offer them appropriate services.

In communities characterized by open and complete homeless assistance agencies, these agencies typically supply services through their own staff to meet more common, less specialized client needs such as assessment and general case management. Open agencies may offer an entire spectrum of contact and housing opportunities, from outreach and drop-in to permanent supportive housing, or they may specialize in ...