Dane Men's Shelter Referral Workflow - Day Shelters

Background

The following workflow and resources are available to support users of the Madison / Dane County Continuum of Care in referring participants from Day Shelter programs to Men's Shelter.

The Waitlists

There are two waitlists, Unsheltered Priority Referrals and First Come First Served. Day Shelters are only able to add guests to the First Come First Served list, while the other list is used by street outreach projects. 

The First Come First Served list includes those who :

1) have an HMIS enrollment in a relevant project,

2) are eligible and have expressed interest in staying at the men’s shelter, and 

3) have a recent attendance record documented in HMIS. 

The list is sorted by the length of time without a shelter bed as measured by the most recent between:

■     The most recent shelter stay or

■     The start date of the longest active relevant enrollment

Adding clients to the waitlist

1. Clients must have an active HMIS enrollment in a day shelter (DS). Refer to the standard Day Shelter HMIS workflow for additional information on enrolling guests.
2. To be added to the waitlists, enrolled clients must also have a completed Men’s Shelter Referral and Street Outreach Assessment indicating the guest is interested in staying in shelter. This link has general information on finding and entering a new assessment.
   1. First navigate to the program level assessment tab. 
   2. Next, select the Men's Shelter Referral and Street Outreach Assessment
   3. Confirm the correct assessment date. If the date the information was collected was not today, edit the date.
   4. Confirm the guest's gender. Only guests who do not identify as "female" are eligible for men's shelter. Updates to the gender field must be done on the client's Profile page. 
   5. Select the correct shelter interest response. 
   6. Guests who previously declined a shelter bed or shelter staff were unable to contact may have this status carry through from their most recent assessment. Update the shelter interest field to match the client's current wishes, which will add them back to the list.
3. Any changes to a client's shelter interest and/or vulnerability are documented on a new shelter interest assessment. Waitlist data pulls from the most recent assessment. 
4. Guests must check in daily if they are using services. A guest without an attendance record during the past 7 days will not pull into the shelter waitlist unless they have a documented CLS (current living situation) with a street outreach project. A client will automatically return to the list without losing their spot if they return.
5. If a client is no longer active in at least one DS (day shelter) or SO (street outreach) project, they are no longer included in the waitlists. Upon returning to services, a new shelter interest assessment should be completed.