The pilot program sought to:

• Enhance community resilience through designated, capacity-building funds.
• Optimize access to funds based on evolving needs and priorities.
• Increase the visibility of data to support the need for flexible funding streams and identify other funding sources.

The results? Significant improvements in individuals’ mental and physical health with fewer reported unhealthy days.

There is a potential $8.00 per member per month higher medical cost associated with having an unhealthy day. This indicates long-term cost savings could be realized by increasing the number of individual healthy days.

Reaching People in Need with Social Care Funding

Metro United Way demonstrated the ability to have a real and lasting impact on the communities it serves—with Unite Us Payments solution providing the platform to monitor and measure that impact.

Unite Us provides partners in the community with one easy-to-use, secure, and compliant platform to coordinate social care, including social needs screening, referrals, and tracking of funding and outcomes.

Reducing the administrative burden thanks to automated workflows and reporting, our platform increases care teams’ efficiency and impact, as they can focus more on what they do best: helping people.

Download the case study to learn how Unite Us can bring better health outcomes to the people and communities you serve.

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On a typical Saturday last January in Sioux City, Iowa, Ana Hernandez got ready for bed after a night of watching television with her family. She joked with her daughter that it was so cold outside, they might freeze that night.

A few hours later, around 6 am, Ana woke up to a peculiar smell. She wanted to keep sleeping but felt that something was off, so she decided to check the kitchen. That’s when she walked past her daughter’s room and saw that it was “bright, beet red.” Her home, where both her son and daughter were still sleeping, quickly became engulfed in flames.

As Hernandez and her children rushed downstairs, they saw that fire was already ripping through the two-story building where they lived.

“I was paralyzed seeing how much smoke and fire there was in comparison to what I was experiencing inside,” Hernandez said. She watched helplessly as all her family’s possessions were destroyed in an instant. “It was everything we had and everything we knew. And there was nothing we could do about it,” Hernandez said.

Making the first referral

The following day, Hernandez called the Sioux City Community School District, where both her children attend school. She wanted to let the school know that her kids had lost their computers in the fire, so they wouldn’t be able to participate in their virtual classes on Monday. Hernandez reached Dulce Sanchez, Equity and Homeless Liaison, at the school district.

Upon learning that the Hernandez family had lost everything, Sanchez sprang into action. Her organization had recently joined the Unite Iowa network, and she knew this was an opportunity to make her first referral and connect Hernandez with essential resources.

“I logged in and checked off everything I thought she would need,” Sanchez said. Those needs included housing, clothing, household items, food, and extracurricular activities for Hernandez’s son and daughter.

Within 24 hours, a nonprofit organization in the community answered the call.

The power of a coordinated network

When Mandy Engel-Cartie saw a request for help through Unite Us, she jumped at the opportunity to offer assistance to a family in need. Engel-Cartie is a director at Girls Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping girls become confident, capable leaders through education and mentorship.

Girls Inc. had recently joined the Unite Iowa network. The organization has a partnership with Bed Bath and Beyond and receives regular donations of brand-new bedding and other household goods. Since the pandemic began, Girls Inc. has served as a learning hub for girls involved in the organization, providing a supportive environment for virtual learning. Since fewer families had been coming through the building, Engel-Cartie said donations were piling up. When she saw the referral from Sanchez, she offered to give Hernandez and her family any supplies they needed.

“Mandy was so wonderful. She was able to provide me with anything and everything,” Hernandez said. “I went to go pay them a visit, and Mandy said, ‘Here’s what we’ve got, grab anything you need.’ In my mind, I was thinking, ‘We need everything.’”

Providing a roadmap to resources

Although the Sioux City Community School District and Girls Inc. had worked together in the past, COVID-19 safety protocols had created a silo between the two organizations. The Unite Us Platform was able to keep these two partners connected throughout the pandemic.

“If we had not been part of Unite Iowa and if we did not have the platform, we simply would not have been aware of the needs of this family,” Engel-Cartie said. “In a nutshell, there was a need, and there were resources, but there wasn’t a roadmap between those two things. Unite Iowa is what gave us that roadmap and changed lives.”

School districts across networks powered by Unite Us serve as critical convenors within their communities to address the social determinants of health of their students and families. As the Equity and Homeless Liaison for the Sioux City Community School District—which serves more than 15,000 students—Sanchez said she had often struggled to connect families with the help they needed efficiently. Like many communities across the U.S., Sioux City faces unprecedented levels of social need due to the pandemic, and connection to resources is now more critical than ever. Like many of the networks powered by Unite Us, Unite Iowa reports food assistance, housing and shelter, and clothing and household goods as their top three needs.

“Sometimes, it’s hard for me to find which resource to use. We have resources, but it can be difficult to get a hold of them,” Sanchez said. Through the Unite Us Platform, she has already made a second referral for another client.

“It’s comforting for us too because we know that our families are getting that local help,” Sanchez said. “Our families know now, there are good people out there, there are resources, and there are people willing to provide help.”

Unite Iowa is a community data exchange of health and social care providers sponsored by CyncHealth.

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Housing as the highest need across all networks

Housing remains the top need across Unite Us’ networks spanning across 40 states, accounting for 30% of all service requests. When we dive deeper, we also find that outcome resolution rates are lower for housing at 69% compared to food assistance at 85% and income assistance at 90%.

This data shows that despite the protections in place for renters and homeowners including CARES Act funding, state and local governments are unable to meet the growing demand for housing assistance, particularly for those who are at risk of eviction, during a time where stable and safe housing is critical to fighting the pandemic.

Within three months, $3MM distributed to over 2500 individuals in St. Louis

We are seeing this first hand in St. Louis where the Unite Us Platform is being used by United Way 2-1-1 Missouri in partnership with the City and County to coordinate and track the disbursement of CARES Act funding for eviction prevention, including rental, mortgage and utility assistance. Starting on August 19th, The Greater St. Louis Community Information Exchange, funded through a grant from the Missouri Foundation for Health to the United Way of Greater St. Louis, supported the distribution of funding to its community via the Unite Us Platform. A little more than three months later, the United Way 2-1-1 has used the Unite Us Platform to coordinate the distribution of over $3MM in funding to over 2500 individuals, with thousands of others in the process of receiving support.

This report details the St. Louis City and County CARES Act funding distributed on the Unite Us Platform and the average disbursement per case.

Can supply meet the increased demand?

We are beginning to see demand for services surpass the supply, with 57% of cases being resolved positively. Case resolution rates often indicate a network’s ability to meet the demand of individual and family needs in the community. Time to case closure also indicates a network’s ability to meet the community’s needs. The St. Louis network is experiencing on average 24 days to close a case. As we analyze further in St. Louis, we see that one of the common reasons for an unresolved case and longer case close time is the time required to obtain documentation to meet federal grant requirements. To receive CARES Act funding, each individual must show their loss of income is due to COVID-19, including but not limited to: pre-COVID pay stubs or proof of income, current proof of income or proof of unemployment, proof of a hospital visit if hospitalized, proof of potential eviction and being behind on rent, or a letter from the landlord stating that the person will not be evicted if this month’s rent is paid. These requirements present a substantial hurdle for community-based organizations and local governments as they work to meet the immediate needs of individuals impacted by COVID-19, especially while so many are themselves displaced from their workplaces.

“Faced with a seemingly unavoidable wave of homelessness, St. Louis opted to take a systematic approach to addressing the need. By disbursing funds through a common platform with Unite Us, the United Way was able to gain insights for the city and county about the gap between the need and available funding, as well as demographic disparities in housing instability.” – Regina Greer, Chief Impact Officer of United Way of Greater St. Louis

St. Louis is not alone in this struggle. Most American cities are facing not only the infectious spread of COVID-19, but the overwhelming economic impacts of job loss on individuals and families. While cities and counties like St. Louis use these metrics in real-time to identify gaps and divert funding, recruit new providers and partners, or advocate for needed resources, an avalanche of new cases continues to grow.

St. Louis data show the disproportionate impact on women of color

The network data in St. Louis is also telling a familiar and deeply troubling story. COVID-19 is having a disproportionate impact on women of color. The St. Louis rapid response network tracks demographic data coupled with referral needs and outcomes. The data clearly show that Black women who are heads of their household have been disproportionately impacted by job loss due to the pandemic and face increased risk of eviction.

“This has affected my hours as a caregiver. A lot of people are afraid of others coming to their homes due to COVID-19. I am a single mother of four, I am only working three hours a day, it’s not enough to pay utilities and rent. It’s behind and I’m afraid that my family will be forced out on the streets. I am really trying to stay strong but this pandemic has really changed our lives.”

Did you become unemployed due to COVID-19?	Head of Household Gender Distribution	Race Distribution

Moving from response to recovery

Although the data shows the gaps left even after successful disbursement of CARES Act funding, these funds still serve an important role in the larger plan to enable recovery and future resilience for our country and individuals most affected by the pandemic and economic recession.

We need to provide tools to state and local governments to disburse their CARES Act and other emergency funding in the most expedient, coordinated, and trackable way possible – while advocating to expand funding eligibility for people who needed assistance prior to the pandemic. As currently written, CARES Act funding only covers those with loss of income due to the pandemic, not the thousands who were already struggling and who are now in even more dire straits. Using data to identify individual and community-level needs and track outcomes from these disbursements will help state and local governments identify areas for further investment. We are actively working with our partners in St. Louis and others to use this data to inform additional opportunities to fill the gaps identified while also focusing community engagement efforts to onboard organizations that can support co-occurring needs like food, utilities, and income assistance for the broader community launch in Q1 of 2021.

Learn more about how Unite Us can help track and manage CARES Act and other fund distributions to address emergencies in your community today and other COVID response efforts:

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The post The Impact of CARES Act Funding Nationwide and in St. Louis: Early Data Trends appeared first on uniteus.com.

Housing and shelter providers across the country are seeing the initial waves of individuals and families forced out of their homes with little time and few resources to relocate to safe housing in their community. As the court system begins to reopen and process landlord eviction cases, the social care providers on the frontlines know these initial waves will soon be a tsunami.

Coordinated social care networks brace for impact

We continue to see a national trend across our data showing drastic spikes in clients seeking housing and shelter and utilities assistance. As reported in our last two data blog posts, housing and shelter referrals show the highest number of COVID mentions at in-take across our network, revealing a connection between the pandemic and the financial crisis many are experiencing. Additionally, housing and shelter and utilities remain our highest requested service types across the country.

More than just tracking referral numbers and types, the Unite Us Platform allows partners to track their case resolution numbers and outcomes–were the needs of my client, patient, member met, and what was the outcome? With our accurate and structured outcome data, networks can assess their capacity in real-time and prepare for what is just around the corner. So, how are our networks responding to the eviction crisis?

Local-level rapid response: The birth of an eviction coordination center

Louisville, Kentucky is the center of the United Community network, powered by Unite Us and sponsored by Metro United Way and Aetna/CVS. Since April of 2019, United Community has been connecting people to the services they need, and providing insights to the network on how to better serve the community. With this foundation in place and Unite Us’ community engagement team on the ground, Louisville was able to assess the immediate need for housing and shelter and use its CARES Act funding to directly address the housing needs of its community. In partnership with Louisville’s Southwest Community Ministries and the local 2-1-1, United Community established an Eviction Coordination Center, which connects individuals to rental assistance, utility assistance, and legal aid should concerns about eviction with a landlord arise.

Clare Wallace of Louisville’s Community Ministries has been fielding calls from panicked residents, “We know this can be really scary. They’re calling us panicking that they need to try and find some resources. The process can be frustrating and confusing. So, to have assistance through that [the Eviction Coordination Center] is really important.”

Within two weeks of standing up the Eviction Coordination Center, powered by Unite Us, assistance requests spiked to over 600. In just under 3 weeks, the network has been able to respond to over 40% of these requests.

Our commitment to close the gap

Our Data and Analytics team continues to enhance our insights capabilities and offerings. The team is building an evictions dashboard that will help track housing and shelter needs as eviction bans lift and more Americans face housing insecurity and homelessness, many for the first time in their lives. Our community engagement team on the ground will continue to engage and onboard community-based organizations (CBOs) offering housing and shelter services, to bolster network capacity and meet growing demand.

To learn more about our national networks click here.

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The post How Our Networks are Responding to the Eviction Crisis appeared first on uniteus.com.

Huge thanks to Erin Willis, Patrice Pratt, Community Service Council, and all our partners in Tulsa who are doing incredible work every day! We’re making an impact because of you.

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The post One Community’s Approach to Preventing Homelessness: All Doors Open appeared first on uniteus.com.

Stefanie Lindeman

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, on a single night in January 2017 there were over 86,000 chronically homeless individuals in the United States (24% of the total national homeless population).[i] A person is considered chronically homeless when they “have experienced homelessness for at least a year—or repeatedly—while struggling with a disabling condition such as mental illness, substance use disorder, or physical disability.”[ii] Unsurprisingly, there is a direct connection between homelessness and poor health.[iii] But evidence also shows that when housing support is integrated with healthcare, it improves patient adherence to medication regimens and treatment plans and results in fewer visits to the emergency room and fewer hospital admissions.[iv]

When you give someone permanent housing, you establish trust with that person,[v] which allows you to better engage them with healthcare and other services. Housing can be a gateway to helping people address the factors contributing to their homelessness and can enable them to achieve healthier, more stable lives. When housing and healthcare work together, it not only improves people’s health and reduces the costs of care, it helps them break the cycle of chronic homelessness.[vi]

Making housing a component of “whole person” healthcare takes close coordination between healthcare systems, housing programs, other social service organizations, and public agencies—entities that often have never worked together before. At times this can make for something like culture shock. In Phoenix, Arizona, Mercy Maricopa Integrated Care, a nonprofit healthcare plan, partners with the City of Phoenix Housing Department and the local United Way to provide supportive housing services as well as physical and mental healthcare and substance abuse treatment to homeless individuals with mental illness.[vii] But before they could get their initiative off the ground, Mercy Maricopa and the Housing Department first had to learn about the policy environments affecting each other’s programs, as well as their unique financing structures. They had to align their goals and their approaches, and make sure they understood their own and their partners’ roles. Because they took the time to lay that foundation, they were able to build an extremely effective program that leverages the strengths and resources of all partners: Preliminary data from this program show that between November 2014 and October 2015, psychiatric hospital admissions for the served population dropped by 46% and utilization of crisis services dropped by a third.[viii]

It is also critical that partners implement systems to coordinate their communication and facilitate the delivery of integrated services. SD United, a care coordination network for veteran-serving organizations in San Diego, adopted the Unite Us technology to connect the members of its network. This allows a range of social services, including housing programs, healthcare providers and substance abuse treatment, to easily cross-refer their clients to each other. Alpha Project, a San Diego nonprofit, launched its Rapid Rehousing Project in December 2016 and joined SD United shortly thereafter. By June 2017, only six months after the program began, Alpha Project had linked 50 veterans with housing, 31 one of whom were referred through the SD United network. What is more, because the referral now comes complete with all of the necessary documentation, Alpha Project has been able to significantly reduce the time between the referral and a placement in housing, in some cases to as little as two days.[ix]

Finally, partners must creatively leverage funding streams to support their collaboration. For example, in Philadelphia, the City Office of Homeless Services has reinvested Medicaid savings into an initiative that places chronically homeless and mentally ill individuals in stable, secure housing and provides them the services they need to remain healthy and off the street. After eight years, 89% of the chronically homeless individuals who entered the program remain housed and the cost of providing them with behavioral health services has dropped nearly 80%.[x] (In fact there are multiple ways to leverage Medicaid funds to integrate housing supports with healthcare, including Medicaid Research and Demonstration programs, Community Based Services waivers, and reimbursement for Targeted Care Management services. [xi]) Private funders are also increasingly interested in investing in innovative approaches to decreasing chronic homelessness. Funders Together to End Homelessness, for example, currently has over 200 members, including leading philanthropies like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Robin Hood Foundation.[xii]

Building partnerships to integrate healthcare and housing can be challenging. But as the collaborations described here show, it can be done, and there are resources available to help. If healthcare systems, public agencies and nonprofit organizations in other cities were to follow the examples set in Philadelphia, San Diego and Phoenix, it could change the course of tens of thousands of lives.

To learn more about how Unite Us can support partnerships between housing providers and other health and community based organizations please fill out your information below!

About the Author:Stefanie Lindeman blogs on health equity and the social determinants of health at Stairway to Healthcare (stairwaytohealthcare.com).

Sources:

[i] National Alliance to End Homelessness, available at https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/who-experiences-homelessness/chronically-homeless/

[ii] Ibid

[iii] Paradise & Ross

[iv] Ibid

[v] Lloyd Pendleton, The Housing First Approach to Homelessness, TEDMED 2016, video and transcript available at https://www.ted.com/talks/lloyd_pendleton_the_housing_first_approach_to_homelessness/transcript#t-810988

[vi] Office of Policy Development and Research, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Linking Housing and Health Care Works for Chronically Homeless Persons, Evidence Matters (online newsletter) Summer 2012, available at https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/em/summer12/highlight3.html

[vii] Ibid

[viii] Paradise & Ross

[ix] Unite Us Housing Case Study, Alpha Project Successfully Houses 50 Homeless Veterans; also SD United website, https://sandiegounited.org/about-sd-united/; Alpha Project website, https://www.alphaproject.org/about-us/mission-and-history

[x] Julia Paradise, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Donna Cohen Ross, Health Management Associates, Linking Medicaid and Supportive Housing: Opportunities and On-the-Ground Examples, Issue Brief Jan. 2017, available at http://files.kff.org/attachment/Issue-Brief-Linking-Medicaid-and-Supportive-Housing-Opportunities-and-On-the-Ground-Examples

[xi] Paradise & Ross; also Stuart M. Butler, Dayna Bowen Matthew & Marcela Cabello, Rebalancing medical and social spending to promote health: Increasing state flexibility to improve health through housing, posted Feb. 15, 2017, available at https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2017/02/15/re-balancing-medical-and-social-spending-to-promote-health-increasing-state-flexibility-to-improve-health-through-housing/

[xii] Funders Together to End Homelessness website, http://www.funderstogether.org/members_alphabetically

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