A Look At Our Work

Health Care for the Homeless/Community Mental Health Agency Collaboration Project

Many homeless individuals need multiple supports. Building partnerships across the health, mental health, and substance abuse fields allows these individuals to more easily access the services they need to improve their physical and emotional well-being.

The National Center is evaluating the Health Care for the Homeless/Community Mental Health Agency Collaboration Project, which was created to integrate mental health, health, and substance abuse services in twelve communities. In each community, medical and mental health agencies coordinate services to homeless individuals who have serious mental illness and co-occurring disorders. The National Center is determining the extent of integration among the partner agencies in each of the twelve communities with the aim of achieving an integrated service delivery system that holistically meets the needs of homeless individuals.

Homeless Families Program

In addition to suffering from the trauma of living on the streets or in shelters, many homeless women have been victims of sexual abuse, physical violence, and other traumatic experiences that have painful and long-lasting effects. These women and their children need programs and services that address their complex situations in a sensitive and informed manner.

The National Center and its partners have implemented the Homeless Families Program to determine how best to meet the unique needs of homeless women and children. This is the first multi-site study to focus solely on interventions for homeless mothers who have psychiatric and substance use disorders.

National Collaborative on Trauma-Surviving Homeless Children

Homeless families experience a myriad of traumatic events. In addition to the need to reestablish a home, homeless children and parents suffer from repeated threats to their well-being, including mental and physical illness, substance abuse, and interpersonal violence.

Through the National Collaborative on Trauma-Surviving Homeless Children, The National Center is working to increase understanding of the extreme trauma experienced by homeless families, determine best practices for providing trauma-related services, and develop methods and strategies to increase access to treatment and services that cut across multiple fields.

National Resource and Training Center on Homelessness and Mental Illness

The National Resource and Training Center (NRTC) on Homelessness and Mental Illness offers resources to the field that help integrate and transform services for homeless people with mental illness. NRTC provides a vital link between emerging knowledge and everyday practice.

As a partner in the NRTC, The National Center develops and disseminates information to facilitate service systems change and strengthen outreach, engagement, service delivery, and housing for people who are homeless and have serious mental illness. To ensure successful information exchange and the adoption of effective practices, we conduct workshops, trainings, conferences, and provide technical assistance to service providers on strategies to end homelessness.

National Technical Assistance Center on Chronic Homelessness

The most disenfranchised and hardest-to-serve homeless people, the "chronically homeless", have been on the streets or in shelters for long periods, have complex needs, and use a disproportionate amount of services.

To reduce the number of chronically homeless individuals, The National Center provides technical assistance to eleven sites engaged in an initiative that aims to improve these individuals' access to services by moving them from streets and shelters into permanent housing linked to services. Using a "Housing First" model in which housing is considered a basic right, homeless people are rapidly housed; services are not a requirement and consumer choice is respected. In addition, The National Center supports these sites in the development and implementation of their comprehensive plans to end chronic homelessness in their communities.

The Katrina Project

Teachers, principals, social workers, counselors, case managers, child care workers and shelter providers are the "second responders" in the national crisis that began when Hurricane Katrina first struck. Unfortunately, many of its effects have been long-lasting.

The National Center is training caregivers along the Gulf Coast to better understand traumatic stress, its impact on children, and how best to respond. We are also training caregivers on the award-winning OrganWise Guys curriculum to help young children deal with their physical and emotional responses to stress. The National Center, in partnership with OrganWise Guys, Inc. and the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, is providing these critical trainings free of charge to communities.

PEACH Initiative: Physical and Emotional Awareness for Children Who Are Homeless

Homeless children are sick more frequently than other children, have more emotional problems, and are more easily distressed. Their diet is often determined by shelter kitchens and whatever prepared foods their family can afford. Excluded from the routines of usual family life, homeless children do not have regular opportunities for sports, group play, or physical exercise.

To meet the need for a nutrition and wellness program specific to the unique characteristics of family shelters, The National Center has adapted an interactive curriculum originally created for use in schools. Through the PEACH Initiative (Physical and Emotional Awareness for Children who are Homeless), we train shelter providers to teach homeless children and their parents about good nutrition, physical activity, and how to deal with the stress of being homeless.

Policy Academies

Access to mainstream resources including health, human services, employment, and housing services is critical for ensuring the well-being of homeless individuals, and for helping them achieve and maintain permanent housing and become self-supporting.

The National Center is performing an in-depth evaluation of a series of Policy Academies on Chronic Homelessness designed to help states develop interagency and multidisciplinary teams, and to assist these teams in developing statewide plans to improve homeless people's access to mainstream services. The evaluation results will inform future efforts for systemic change at the state-level.

Strengthening At Risk and Homeless Young Mothers and Children

Conditions imposed by poverty and homelessness place families, particularly children, at risk for a host of adverse outcomes. With funding from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, The National Center, in collaboration with the Child Welfare League of America, and the National Alliance to End Homelessness, is undertaking an initiative called Strengthening At Risk and Homeless Young Mothers and Children.

The initiative is designed to improve the housing, health, and development of young at-risk and homeless mothers and children. By supporting innovative locally-based collaborations, we aim to increase the integration of housing/homelessness service systems and child development/welfare systems, and increase service delivery capacity through training and technical assistance. Lessons learned, such as best practices, will be strategically disseminated to promote high quality service delivery.

Supportive Housing and Managed Care Pilot

Chronically homeless families and individuals are among the "hardest to serve" segment of the human services population. They use services frequently, can be costly to serve, and the services they receive may be ineffective because of barriers such as mental illness, physical illness, or chemical dependency.

The National Center is conducting an independent evaluation of a Minnesota-based five-year pilot project called the Supportive Housing and Managed Care Pilot that coordinates access to affordable housing, health care, employment, and social services for single adults and families whose homelessness is complicated by difficulties such as mental illness, addiction, health problems, and abuse. The evaluation will determine if and how the project is successful in improving the lives of homeless individuals and families, and will guide the State of Minnesota in creating an effective system to serve homeless people.

Trauma-Informed Organizational Toolkit

The National Center has developed a Trauma-Informed Organizational Toolkit to help providers identify their programs' strengths and weaknesses related to the principles of "trauma-informed" services, and provide a blueprint for making specific, concrete changes in the way services are delivered.

This interactive Toolkit has two components: (1) a checklist designed to help shelters measure their current status with regard to "trauma-informed services". It covers all aspects of program functioning, including physical space, staffing, knowledge, attitudes, services, policies and procedures, training, consumer participation, and cultural diversity; and (2) a companion guide that explains the nature of the organizational changes that must be made to become "trauma-informed." This guide provides background information related to trauma, case examples, exercises, specific strategies, and concrete recommendations to improve the response to trauma. With support from the Daniels Fund, the Toolkit is being piloted in Boston-area family homeless shelters.

Wilson Housing Study

Communities provide a wide range of housing programs to help homeless families and families at risk of becoming homeless. However, little is known about what combination of housing and services is best for families with different strengths and challenges. As communities across the country develop plans to end family homelessness, it is important to understand the mix of housing and services that best serve families with different needs.

The National Center is conducting the Wilson Housing Study, a longitudinal examination of the efficacy of various housing and service models intended to help low-income families achieve stability and become self-supporting. Through this study, we hope to better understand which programs are most effective, which housing programs and mix of services are best suited to particular families, and which programs are cost-effective.