Homelessness configuration management overview
The process of homelessness case management has a number of contributory factors that need to be configured at the outset in order to inform daily activities, functions and inquiries. These configuration components enable the housing authority to define specific parameters in line with their own procedures and adherence to legal statute. Additional values and attributes can be appended to the records at any time, as required, although maintaining comprehensive information from the start will reap its own rewards. Homelessness case configuration management comprises three key elements: homelessness escalation rule maintenance, homelessness task maintenance and homelessness activity maintenance. When devising homelessness activities and the underlying tasks that will drive forward their progression, it is important to remember that they should be client-oriented, aimed at overcoming barriers and delivering successful outcomes, such as settled accommodation and sustained tenancies. Their inherent structure and usability should also focus on making processes easier, more transparent and reflect the coordinated approach achieved though well-established partnerships across all agencies.
Homelessness Escalation Rule Maintenance - All homelessness applications, as well as requests for help and advice, can be service level driven and form an integral part of a wider Service Level Agreement (SLA). Escalation rules define the automatic events to be triggered in the instance where a case or inherent task exceeds the SLA target, or reaches a predefined warning period. The escalation process would typically notify the case or task owner, and potentially members of a stakeholder group using customised communication templates. The escalation process is not just a one-off exercise but rather subsequent follow-on rules can be defined and triggered in the event that, say, a task has stagnated beyond a defined period. Open cases and tasks can therefore be continually tracked and actively progressed through to a successful conclusion.
Homelessness Task Maintenance - A task is a specific action that must be undertaken following receipt of a homelessness application or request for help, and for which a case has been generated. Each homelessness case is steered by its associated activities - logical groups of actions required to achieve a specific aim - and comprise one or more related tasks, which define how the inquiries will be conducted. Any number of discrete tasks can be linked to a homelessness case, with a specific attribute governing whether each can appear more than once within the same execution plan. In structuring all the activities that are relevant to a case, tasks can be added manually at the point of need, or they can be linked automatically by virtue of their existence within an underlying workflow path. Dictated by the nature of the assigned tasks, dependencies can be configured between them to restrict the point at which related tasks are commenced. As all identified actions within a homelessness case are target-driven, an end user can define any number of operational SLAs to control the progression of individual tasks i.e. on creating or editing a task definition, the relevant SLA can be assigned to it, setting the permitted timescale from commencement to completion.
Homelessness Activity Maintenance - These are the building blocks of all homelessness cases - categorised as Prevention and Relief, Assessment or Review - and represent the structured framework that will empower end users to execute standardised processes in line with their published homelessness strategy, adhering fully to statutory obligations. Any number of customer-facing and internal activity types can be created to suit the working practices of the housing authority, mapping out procedures and proactive response mechanisms that will underpin their service provision. As each activity is linked to a custom category, which in turn is mapped to an overarching master status - Prevention and Relief or Homelessness - the defined characteristics control its inclusion and management for each newly generated case. To ensure that all core elements pertinent to the progression of a homelessness case are instantly available at the point of creation, each custom category can also be mapped to a number of default activities.
The increasing focus on early intervention solutions depends on the timely allocation of homelessness cases to highly trained officers who possess an excellent understanding of all influencing factors and relevant local knowledge. To that end, Civica Cx Housing enables end users to configure allocation rules that are automatically applied to cases upon first creation, thus ensuring that ownership is passed to the most appropriate resource. Such rules are triggered based on the specific custom category linked to each new case; where no rules apply, ownership preferences are specified on-the-fly.
Separate help articles have been created for each key aspect of homelessness configuration management, including: