Your support throughout this budget process has been critical, and our work is not yet over. Now is the time to voice to the Senate our commitment to ensuring that Massachusetts invests in what works – permanent supportive housing that ends the homelessness of our most vulnerable neighbors and saves the Commonwealth money in the process.

Take Action: Contact Your State Senator!

State Senator James B. Eldridge, Chair of the Joint Committee on Housing, has agreed to file an amendment in the Senate Budget to allocate $2.2 million to line item 7004-0104 for Home & Healthy for Good supportive housing for chronically homeless individuals.
 
Please take a moment to call your state senator and ask him or her to co-sponsor this important amendment. To find out who your senator is, click here or contact Caitlin Golden at cgolden@mhsa.net or 617-367-6447 ext. 28. When you speak with your senator, please ask him or her to call the office of Chairman James B. Eldridge at 617-722-1120 and sign on as a co-sponsor to this amendment. The proposed deadline for amendments is Friday at 5 pm, so it is important to take action now.

For more information about Home & Healthy for Good, click here.

Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley has called for a public hearing on the impact of for-profit schools on Boston residents.

The hearing will be held:

Wednesday, May 30, 2012
11:00 a.m.
Christopher A. Iannella Chamber
Boston City Hall

The Boston City Council has heard from individual constituents and organization, such as Crittenton Women’s Union, about the low graduation rates and high level of student loan defaults experienced at for-profit schools. The Council is seeking public comment on how to provide improved information and protection to students in the city.

CWU encourages you to share your ideas and experiences.  If you are interested in testifying in person or providing written testimony, please contact Chelsea Sedani at 617.259.2936 or csedani@liveworkthrive.org

Click here to access a testimony template.

• Thursday, June 7, 1PM to 4PM
• 100 Cambridge St., Boston
• 2^nd Floor Conference Rooms (RSVP will be required)

The Steering Committee* charged with drafting the first statewide plan to prevent and end homelessness among veterans in MA invites you to join us for a conversation and focus groups to obtain your input about draft goals and strategies for the plan.

We will be hosting two identical statewide meetings.  If you are based in Eastern MA, please save the afternoon of June 7^th from 1PM-4PM to participate in this conversation. If you are based in Western MA, we will send notification of the date and location as soon as it has been confirmed. Details for both meetings and RSVP instructions will follow.

*Steering Committee Members:

• MA Interagency Council on Housing and Homelessness
  • Liz Rogers, Executive Director
  • Laila Bernstein, Director of Data and Evaluation
• U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs
  • Craig Coldwell, VA New England Mental Health Service Line Director
  • Kevin Casey, VA New England Network Homeless Coordinator
• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
  • Bob Shumeyko, CPD Director
  • Stephanie Harrington, CPD Representative
• MA Department of Veterans’ Services
  • Secretary Coleman Nee
  • Claire Makrinikolas, Director of Housing and Outreach
• MA Department of Housing and Community Development
  • Arthur Jemison, Deputy Undersecretary
  • Steve Carvalho, Chief of Staff
• Father Bill’s & MainSpring
  • John O’Brien, Senior Advisor
• Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance
  • Joe Finn, Executive Director
• Technical Assistance Collaborative
  • Jim Yates, Senior Associate

SkillWorks, the Workforce Solutions Group, and the Skills2Compete MA coalition commend the House for its Jobs Bill, released yesterday at the State House, and thank Speaker DeLeo and Chairman Wagner for their continued focus on job training and job creation.

The bill’s provisions help spur innovation and job growth and invest in training programs, like those supported by the Workforce Competitiveness Trust Fund, that address the skills gap by supporting employers so they can continue to partner with community colleges, voc tech schools, career centers and workforce boards to train unemployed people.  The Competitiveness Trust Fund identifies critical job vacancies and creates training pipelines to ensure our state has the skilled workforce to grow our economy.

The bill also contains the major elements of the Middle-Skills Solutions Act (S2206, H2713), which had the support of 56 co-sponsors in the House and Senate, including:

• $10M in funding for the Workforce Competitiveness Trust Fund from the consolidated budget surplus for the purpose of filling the middle-skill gap in Massachusetts
• Allows for WCTF funding to support Regional Centers of Excellence aligned with the state’s economic development agenda
• Provides for the regular review of local and regional labor market data to development regional workforce development plans
• Provides for baseline report on middle-skill training completion and credential attainment rates in the Commonwealth

Read the WBUR/State House News Service report on the Jobs bill.

Download the full text of the House Jobs bill.

Download the highlights of the Jobs bill.

Download a section by section summary of the Jobs bill.

Click here for a summary of the sections relevant to middle-skill training is copied below.

The new Emergency Solutions Grant RFR is now posted on Comm-Pass.  Please distribute this e-mail which explains how to access the document to all of your providers.  Jill, please include former ESG recipients as well.  Please remember that all Respondents and potential respondents are required to check Comm-Pass regularly for amendments to the document.

The new Emergency Solutions Grant Request for Responses (RFR) has been posted on Comm-PASS. You can access the RFR by using Control and click on the link below:

• www.comm-pass.com    This will bring you to the Comm-pass home page. 
• From there you click on the Solicitations Tab.
• Once at the Solicitations page: click on Browse all open solicitations.
• The next page will ask you to enter the name of the Department:  Type   Department of Housing and Community Development

A list of DHCD procurements should then appear,  as of now there are 5 but this changes.  Click on DHCD2012-03S

Excerpt from the Executive Summary:

Recent reports have brought national attention to the prevalence of family homelessness1 and the need to coordinate across all levels of government to prevent and end family homelessness. In June 2011, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released the 2010 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR), the sixth in a series of annual reports on the extent and nature of homelessness nationwide. The report documents a 29 percent increase in sheltered family homelessness between 2007 and 2010. Today, an estimated 168,000 families— 567,000 people—use an emergency shelter or a transitional housing program at some point during the year. The toll of homelessness on children living with their families is troubling. Homelessness can adversely affect children’s mental health and behavior, school attendance and educational achievement, cognitive and motor development, and general health.

A year prior to the 2010 AHAR release, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) released the nation’s first comprehensive strategy to prevent and end homelessness, Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness. The plan sets an ambitious agenda for addressing homelessness among families and other target groups, stresses governmental collaboration at all levels, and encourages using programs targeted to homeless families and mainstream resources to help families achieve housing stability.
The growing concern about family homelessness has renewed the focus among policymakers, researchers, advocates, and practitioners on using mainstream programs to prevent and end homelessness. The underlying belief is that programs explicitly for homeless people cannot be expected to do the whole job of preventing and ending family homelessness. Indeed, ever since the start of specialized federal funding for homeless people,3 it has been recognized that mainstream programs such as Housing Choice Vouchers (HCV) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) provide much greater resources than targeted programs for helping families leave homelessness.

It is within this context that the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) commissioned a study that focuses on local programs that link human services with housing supports to prevent and end family homelessness. (The Department is also engaged in a similar study that focuses on linking housing and services for people who have complex health needs and chronic patterns of homelessness.)

The primary goals of this study are to:

1. Identify programs nationwide that deliberately integrate human services and housing supports for homeless families and conduct site visits to understand how these programs were designed and implemented.
2. Synthesize the information from the site visits into promising practices that facilitated the development, implementation, and sustainability of these programs.

In addition, the study includes the development of an evaluation design document that provides a theoretical framework for rigorously evaluating programs that integrate services and housing supports for the purposes of preventing or ending family homelessness.

More than 80 programs nationwide were considered for the study, and 14 were chosen for study in consultation with a Technical Working Group composed of representatives from HHS, HUD, USICH and the Department of Education. Among the 14 programs, seven had explicit partnerships with the local Public Housing Agencies (PHA) to serve homeless families. These programs were selected to demonstrate how communities partner with PHAs to provide mainstream housing assistance through the HCV program and public housing, for example, to prevent and end homelessness among families.

This report presents the study’s results, which are summarized in the next sections. Appendix A describes the study’s methodology, and Appendix B describes several design options for evaluating homeless assistance programs. Appendices C through P present short case studies on each of the 14 programs included in the study.

Click here to access the full report.

Building a Culture of Self-Care to Support Service Providers

• FREE Webinar
• May 10, 2012
• 2:30-4pm

Join the Campaign to End Child Homelessness for a free webinar on May 10 from 2:30-4 PM EDT on Building a Culture of Self-Care to Support Service Providers. We all need opportunities to step back, breathe, and think about how our work both challenges and enriches us on a daily basis. For people who work in the social services, experiences of intense fatigue and burn-out are common. In addition to the stress of supporting others, managing paperwork, and meeting expectations, partnering with people who have experienced traumatic life events can be traumatizing for service providers. This phenomenon, known as secondary trauma or compassion fatigue, can have a significant impact on quality of life both at work and beyond. In this webinar, participants will learn how to recognize the warning signs of secondary trauma and discuss ways to prevent burnout. Tips and tools for addressing the self-care needs of both individuals and organizations will be covered.

Register today.

This webinar is part of the spring training series Children and Trauma: Understanding Impact and Strengthening Resilience. Learn more.

An Emerging Framework for Ending Unaccompanied Youth Homelessness

When working to end homelessness for a particular population it has proven effective to define a framework by enumerating the population, establishing a typology to assist with scaling of resources, and then to measure progress. While there are great programs doing work with youth, an overall framework has not previously been defined. This brief provides an examination of data on homeless youth, estimates of the number of homeless youth across a typology, and gives a summary of promising strategies to more effectively end youth homelessness.

Click here to learn more about the Alliance’s typology and framework.

• Wednesday, May 9, 2012

• 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM

Homelessness is a traumatic experience for young children who experience it. Many young mothers experiencing homelessness have also experienced trauma either in their own childhoods or more recently. Mothers’ Day is a time for us to celebrate mothers and their role raising children. Join USICH for a discussion of ways homeless services programs can use a trauma informed care model to serve mothers and their children better and help break through the cycle of trauma and homelessness.

Panelists will include USICH’s Executive Director Barbara Poppe and the Director of SAMHSA’s National Center for Trauma Informed Care Joan Gillece

Click here to register.

Click here to access the full brief.