1. Facilitating Self-Resolution
Anne Marie Edmunds, Pierce County Human Services Department
Annie Pennucci, Building Changes

2. Diversion in Pierce County
What prompted us to think about diversion?
How did we respond?
What did we learn?
Why is it the first conversation
we have with everyone? Hi
Thank you for the opportunity to talk about how we are engaging families in conversations about housing solutions and diverting them from a prolonged period of homelessness.
Over the next few minutes I will share a little bit of what prompted us to consider a diversion approach, how we piloted this technique, what we learned, and why it has become the cornerstone of our crisis response system.
Before I dive in – I do want to offer one language caveat – I’m going to refer to “Diversion” here – but in our community, we try not to use the term “diversion” with clients. As you’ll see in a few slides, we engage in a creative conversation with families to help support their process of identifying a housing solution. The emphasis is on conversation – since it’s a dialogue – and not on it being a “program.”
But – because Diversion is sort of the industry’s term of art, we use it for presentation purposes.
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3. What Prompted Diversion?
Client calls and is screened
Client is scheduled for an appointment
Client is assessed
Client is put on Placement Roster
When a vacancy opens, one lucky eligible client gets the call
Lost contact with about 1/3 of the people on the placement roster
Around 20% found housing on their own
Only 20% were entering our system
Remainder stayed on placement roster… for a long time
Quick overview of our system at the time (2014):
Over-simplification
Don’t judge 
The Agency that ran what we then called CI would call through the Placement Roster (aka wait list) about once every quarter to update information and to remove people who couldn’t be contacted. That was important, because it gave us a glimpse into what happened to people while they were waiting for a housing referral:
The agency would lose contact with about 1/3 of the people on the placement roster – cell phone disconnected, don’t return calls or come in for assessment
Around 20% of people on the list found housing on their own – whether with friends, family or re-establishing a rental on their own.
Only 20% entered our system through a housing referral
The remainder were long-stayers on the placement roster – some of whom, frankly would never get a referral.
So we decided to see, what would it look like if we helped people to self-resolve upfront? To answer that question, we started a diversion pilot with families.
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4. How Did We Respond? Acknowledging the Resiliency of Families
Trained Staff in Mediation
Objective, no pre-determined outcome
Active Listening and Reflecting techniques
Placed Staff at Coordinated Entry
FIRST system response focused on immediate housing options
Since we began our pilot on the premise that families are strong, resilient and motivated to keep their housing we partnered with our local dispute resolution center to draw on their problem-solving expertise.
As a result of bringing CDR into the fold, our diversion approach is based on mediation techniques, which relies on the mediator being objective.
There’s no predetermined outcome – the conversation is about handing the problem – and the solution – back to the HH, because in the end, the HH will need to do the really hard work of keeping their housing.
Also relies heavily on Active Listening and Reflecting techniques to begin to help them identify their own solutions
We also placed diversion staff at coordinated entry (not shelter – different than most communities). As families contacted our system, we wanted our FIRST response to be a problem-solving approach, drawing from the premise that families are strong and resilient and motivated to keep their housing. It’s that resiliency – that creativity – that we try to capitalize on through diversion.
As a result, we only offered diversion to literally homeless households (also different than most communities).
So, as you can see, we employed this approach BEFORE screening and we very intentionally meet people where they are.
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5. How Did We Respond? Creative Conversations Staff Role Safe Space
Exploratory, Problem Solving Conversation
Strength-Based and Client-Driven
Staff Role
Creativity
Reality Testing
So, the first step in our homeless crisis response system is what we call a “creative conversation”
We create a safe place for HH to process their crisis (move from fight/flight mentality to critical thinking – can’t do without a safe space to process)
Very exploratory conversation with lots of asking open-ended questions (tell me more about that…) summarizing (so the HH feels heard), and reflecting (with a focus on resiliency and HH strengths) – all with the end of the HH deciding the path they will take. Very, very client-driven conversation.
I’ll also briefly note here that if HH chooses NOT to pursue a housing solution either on their own or with a small amount of support from staff at this point, then staff will continue collecting necessary data elements in a conversational manner in order to enter HH into the Priority Pool (which is our community’s name for a dynamic wait list for a referral to a permanent housing program).
Staff role in this conversation is two-fold:
1. creativity – helping clients to think outside the box (sometimes people only have one, very specific solution in mind), drawing on creative solutions from other households, scrappy with resources, open to unorthodox solutions, stimulates space to brainstorm
Enthusiasm, highly motivated…rubs off on clients. 
2. reality-testing – also responsible to ensure solutions are achievable. Solutions first and foremost must ALWAYS be a SAFE option, but also ensure it is sustainable. Work with clients to think through next steps and future housing stability.
Now Annie is going to share a little more about what we learned during the pilot.
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6. What Have We Learned? Many Families Obtained Housing Through Diversion
BC funding pilot project in Pierce County …. about 1,000 families …. HMIS data ….
Right away we saw 50% and were astounded that it didn’t waiver, it really does hover around 50%. Even when Pierce expanded this to all populations, still continues to hover around 50%. (We see this in King). Not just success of a pilot but generally, of those who opt-in, about half are successful.
What happens if clients do not obtain housing through diversion?
If people aren’t successful or don’t identify an option they want to pursue, then the conversation flows into doing an assessment
Don’t use an off the shelf tool for assessment, developed a community-specific tool focusing on barriers to housing, reducing vulnerability to harm
Can go into a priority pool to be referred for other services such as RRH
As started testing diversion with families, RRH providers noticed they were getting more challenging families
Found that diversion is a really organic way to prioritize. Not based on anyone’s criteria except the households’.
Still have too few resources to provide assistance to all. Families can always choose to give it another try if they are waiting for referrals to other services.
CAVEAT: not a comparison group study, we don’t know what would have happened to these same families without diversion, except based on what we know from before the pilot project (many stayed in the pool without referrals). That’s a next step in our evaluation research.
Building Changes analysis of HMIS data from Pierce County pilot project
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7. What Have We Learned? Families Exited Services Relatively Quickly
Make sure to define length of stay – in this context, it means how long they are receiving services and support.
Diversion: exit when they move in
ES: exit when they move in
RRH: This is for the full length of time, so the “move-in date” happens much sooner. However support services and rental assistance continues for, typically, just over 200 days
TH: longer-term by design. Still considered homeless during this time frame.
Again, not a comparison group study – it may very well be that those who received longer-term services needed that, and thus would not have achieved success without diversion. But we do know that this approach can work for many, and quickly.
Building Changes analysis of HMIS data from Pierce and King counties
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8. What Have We Learned? Families Obtained Housing at Relatively Low Cost
Walk people through costs …
Diversion costs reflect the actual cost of the pilot project, a combination of staff time & flex funds ($500, $1200).
ES, RRH, TH costs are the median cost per housed family reported to the state by providers from the counties in which we operated the pilot projects..
TH is low because this is just for one year of cost, and as we saw on previous slide, length of stay is greater than one year
These other interventions, esp. ES and TH, they are limited to specific units. A limited resource. Diversion is only limited by client creativity and opportunity.
The more we can serve with diversion the more we can reserve our precious limited resources for people who need it most. Helps us prioritize and make best use of resources.
The quicker we can get people back into housing the less likely they are to return (those who are likely to be homeless have already been homeless, so the more we can limit that experience, the more we can impact returns)
Updated cost estimates based on Building Changes analysis of diversion grantee data from Pierce and King County pilot projects and 2016 Washington State Department of Commerce data for Pierce and King County ES, RRH, and TH.
*Likely underestimate. TH enrollments typically last over one year.
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9. What Have We Learned? Returns to the Homeless Response System Are Low
These are a little higher than what we tend to see from other interventions, but not substantially so
(systemwide we tend to see between 5-7% after a year for a more limited measure of returns—returns to programs of literal homelessness such as ES and TH. This is a broader measure of returns to the overall system, which includes prevention).
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10. Why Is This Our First Conversation?
Screening for diversion is ineffective
Households will self-select
Diversion is an organic prioritization
Progressive Engagement for the system
Creates positive urgency
Maximizing opportunity
Sets a problem-solving, housing-first orientation within the system
So why is this our first conversation with everyone? To answer that, I’ll share what we learned from a system perspective:
We found that screening for diversion, or attempting to predict who will be successful, was not useful.
Began the pilot by only offering to family with either housing or employment history in the last six months
Had enough staff bandwidth to offer to ALL family households
Did not change outcomes, in terms of percentage of households who opt for diversion or the success rate
We were surprised!
Turns out, that by relying on client self-determination and resiliency, letting households self-select for diversion is the MOST effective screening mechanism
Trend continued when we began serving all populations with diversion
We will never be able to perfect predict success, SO DON’T
We also found that by positioning diversion as essentially triage into our coordinated entry system, it functions as an organic prioritization for our system
It’s a form of progressive engagement, for the system.
Those who can self-resolve, do (and therefore do not utilize deeper resources).
Even before our system formally implemented referral prioritization, our RRHers noticed that they were receiving higher barriered households
Also, creates a positive urgency to find a solution
Combination of short timeframes and limited funds
Taking advantage of opportunity
Maximizes procrastination phenomenon
Sets the right tone in our system
Even for households who pursue a solution, but don’t attain it – they are set up to continue problem-solving and attaining their own housing stability in RRH.
We believe in this approach so much that we have expanded Creative Conversation training to all providers across our whole system
We have added a full-day workshop as part of our Provider Academy – so that providers offering emergency shelter, rapid rehousing or permanent supportive housing have the opportunity to learn these client engagement techniques, to focus on client-driven, strength-based, PROBLEM-SOLVING
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11. Questions? ?