In 2018, Cisco and Vacation spot: Residence launched into a partnership to deal with homelessness in Santa Clara County. Whereas our main focus was on the event of supportive housing and homelessness prevention, we additionally noticed a possibility to leverage expertise to enhance lives. Whereas not a panacea, expertise can play a important position in serving to people experiencing homelessness entry very important sources, and may improve the effectivity and repair supply of the organizations serving them.
Assessing expertise wants in Santa Clara County’s supportive housing system
We started with a expertise wants evaluation of Santa Clara County’s supportive housing system, which aimed to establish alternatives to leverage knowledge and expertise to strengthen the system of care. The findings had been insightful: each homeless service suppliers and folks receiving companies expressed a necessity for higher communication between employees and shoppers, in addition to the necessity for techniques that enable people to entry companies and handle their very own data.
Based mostly on these insights, the evaluation really useful the event of a client-facing portal. The envisioned device would supply safe entry for e-signatures, appointment scheduling, doc administration, and direct communication between shoppers and suppliers. This laid the inspiration for what would ultimately turn out to be MyConnectSV.
Constructing MyConnectSV: A collaborative effort
Constructing MyConnectSV was not fast. Vacation spot: Residence adopted a considerate and inclusive course of to make sure it was finished proper. Methods-level modifications, equivalent to updating insurance policies round digital releases of knowledge on the County degree, had been vital earlier than implementation might start.
All through the design, growth and testing course of, the Vacation spot: Residence staff persistently engaged service suppliers and folks with lived expertise of homelessness to assist create an answer that would actually meet their wants.
The outcome? A safe, user-friendly platform designed to empower people and streamline service supply.
Key options of MyConnectSV embrace the flexibility to:
- Replace contact data in actual time
- Monitor upcoming appointments
- Add and entry private paperwork
- Entry important sources, equivalent to meals and medical care data
- Signal and add key paperwork electronically
- Talk immediately with case managers
- Monitor their place within the housing queue
- Share their location with case managers through a “drop pin” characteristic
These functionalities save weeks of time, forestall missed alternatives, and expedite the journey to secure housing. For people experiencing homelessness, this implies staying related to important sources and help techniques. For service organizations, it means improved outreach and effectivity in delivering care.
The staff continues to enhance the device by actively listening to customers and incorporating their suggestions into ongoing growth—guaranteeing that MyConnectSV evolves to satisfy the wants of these most impacted.
The broader affect of expertise in homeless companies
The advantages of expertise like MyConnectSV lengthen past time financial savings. It democratizes entry to data, making important sources accessible to all, and is each replicable and scalable. In partnering with Readability by Bitfocus, a platform at the moment utilized by over 75 communities throughout the nation, we ensured that this client-facing module might be simply adopted by Bitfocus customers throughout the USA.
What started as a neighborhood initiative in Santa Clara County is now a replicable, impactful answer with the potential to make a distinction nationwide. And whereas there’s nonetheless a lot work to be finished, it is a reminder of how expertise, when designed with empathy and objective, can actually enhance lives.
To study extra, take a look at Vacation spot: Residence’s newest publication, Breaking Down Limitations to Housing.
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