Collecting Prior Living Situation Information Is Important

Prior Living Situation Information Is Critical!

WHAT IS IT?

Prior Living Situation (often referred to as 3.917 or residence prior) is a multi-part question that identifies three things:
  1. Where a client was staying immediately before project entry.
  2. How long a client had been in that situation.
  3. Establishes if a client has a history of homelessness, and if they meet the criteria for chronic homelessness.
    1. Length of time experiencing homelessness
    2. Number of times experiencing homelessness
It is required for all adults and heads of household.
It is required to be updated at EVERY PROJECT ENTRY.

WHY SHOULD WE CARE?

The importance of Prior Living Situation cannot be understated.
  • This information is used to identified clients as persons experiencing chronic homelessness, which may qualify them for more services.
  • Allows for the identification of patterns in those seeking services, which can effect meaningful change in persons lives.
    • Connecting prior living situation and outcomes can inform providers of which interventions and services are more successful in different client situations.
      • Knowledge of success patterns can provide for informed, targeted intervention in the future, to better serve client needs (minimize system use and minimize client trauma).
  • Identifies patterns in system access.
    • Are we seeing clients coming from the same type of situation? Can we do something to change processes or policy to prevent this from happening in the first place?

HOW TO HELP STAFF UNDERSTAND

Sometimes it is difficult to help direct service staff understand that data collection is directly tied to the clients being served.
  1. Connect Prior Living Situation questions to the program's funding and how the funding keeps the program operating. Without accurate/complete data collection/entry, it negatively impacts the data, which negatively impacts funding for a program.
    1. Show staff the grant agreements and data collection requirements.
    2. Review with data collection and data entry staff the eligibility requirements for the programs in which they work.
  2. Prior Living Situation questions are not an intuitive series of questions.
    1. Help staff understand the purpose of each question, and why the questions are asked in an order.
    2. Have copies of the HMIS Data Standards Manual on hand to help explain questions.
    3. Have copies of the Appendix A: Living Situation Response Categories and Descriptions on hand to make sure staff are familiar with the options.
  3. Help staff see the connection between Prior Living Situation and Destination, and how it gives us the information to learn the best way to serve clients in the future.

DATA COLLECTION INSTRUCTIONS

Intake staff should ask clients about their homeless history, including specific instances the client spent on the street, in an Emergency Shelter, or Safe Haven project. This may require explaining what each of these situations are, relative to the HUD (Housing & Urban Development) definition for each. It will be beneficial to keep the HMIS Data Standards Manual handy while completing these questions with clients.
  1. Record the type of living arrangement the head of household and each client was residing in just prior to entry into the Street Outreach, ES (Emergency Shelter), or SH (Safe Haven) project. For projects that do not provide lodging, the last living situation will be the same as the current living situation. For projects that do provide lodging, this will be the clients living situation prior to moving into the project-provided residence.  Members of the same household may have different prior living situations.
  2. Please review Appendix A: Living Situation Response Categories and Descriptions for a completed list of all available options and classification.
  3. Record the length of time the client was residing in just their previous place of stay.
  4. Record the Approximate date this homeless situation began. Have the client look back to the date of the last time the client had a place to sleep that was not on the streets, ES, or SH and enter that date.
  5. Record the number of times the client has been homeless on the streets, in ES, or SH in the past three years including today (Note if this is the first time the client has been homeless in the past three years then the response is One Time). 
  6. Record the total number of months homeless the client has been on the streets, in ES or SH in the past three years (The number of cumulative, but not necessarily consecutive months spent homeless).
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