PA-505 Continuum of Care Case Conferencing Procedure

PURPOSE

To have a clearly documented procedure for the ongoing maintenance of Chester County’s Case Conferencing to ensure accurate data is collected on those experiencing homelessness within the geographic footprint of the Continuum of Care (CoC) PA-505.

The goal of Case Conferencing is to move households to permanent housing as quickly as possible.

BACKGROUND

Chester County’s Coordinated Entry System ensures equitable access to housing and supportive services for people experiencing homelessness. Our goal is to make homelessness a rare, brief, and onetime only experience. Coordinated Entry utilizes Case Conferencing as a prioritization tool to connect people experiencing homelessness to housing resources in Chester County, in accordance with the Case Conferencing Prioritization Policy.

Case Conferencing brings together the homeless crisis response system providers with other health and human service providers (refer to Appendix A) for weekly meetings to ensure the highest priority HUD Category 1 literally homeless households on the By Name List are linked to permanent housing and/or supportive services as quickly as possible. All attendees are expected to be active contributors in the effort to solve participants’ housing and service needs. The By Names List is a comprehensive list of every household in Chester County experiencing homelessness verified as literally homeless by the Street Outreach Team, updated in real time. Case Conferencing also allows for the discussion of the unique needs of each household and creative problem-solving to ensure these needs are met.