Another year, another conference in the books! Thanks to everyone I hung out with and learned with over the past few days. I don't know about you, but here are my takeaways for this year:
The Super Users Everywhere (SUE) initiative in New Brunswick is great and everyone was talking about it. Basically, it'sa groupof super users that gets together quarterly and talks about priorities related to HIFIS. They talk about barriers facing users, get trained on new features, review data quality issues, and basically just have a space troubleshoot HIFIS issues. It works because they're all using HIFIS daily, so they know what works and what doesn't. @Abby Ryder, @Jordan Killam
The Calgary Drop-In, which makes frequent appearances in these wrap ups, has correlated admission volume against precipitation data, so they can say things like, “There's a major snowstorm coming in 2 days, we should make sure we're appropriately staffed.” Cool. Just demonstrates what can be done in an organization that loves data.
Dr. Jody Carrington, psychologist, says that if you just want to throat-punch everyone you see, you're probably feeling the same as everyone around you. Check out her book, Feeling Seen. I haven't read it yet but she was a really engaging speaker! Lots of laughs.
It can be challenging to collect, and therefore to report on the impact of, cultural services. In the words of @Jack Manidokka of Atlohsa Family Healing Services, “thank you for the smudge, please sign this data sheet” isn't going to go over well. We need to do a better job not at collecting this data but finding alternate ways to understand their impact. Have you heard of the Native Wellness Assessment?
The Neighbourhood Group in Toronto has a peer employment program that hires people straight out of shelters. They figure by giving people income, structure, and purpose, they are able to help a lot of people find a pathway out of homelessness. They have a 5-step program, starting from things as simple as providing peer support in shelters. Very cool.
Ever seen a pie chart showing, say, 30% X, 15% Y, 15% Z, and 40% unknown? According to @Patrick Hunter, you should throw away the unknowns (for that chart) and have it read, instead: 50% X, 25% Y, 25% Z.
There were many presentations I attended about HRIF projects, and one common thread was the importance of flex funds. From things like paying for a cleaning service to prevent an eviction to funeral costs or car repairs, flex funds were often cited as being a little thing that made all the difference.
Dr. Andrew Boozary thinks of housing as “social medicine.” The average hospital visit for a homeless person is twice as long and costs 6x as much as a housed person, with far worse outcomes. And it's been well proven that Housing First reduces hospital visits by a significant amount. What if we thought of supportive housing as a strategy to reduce hospital wait times?
A lot of organisations struggle with data management, data entry, data quality… this conference someone pointed out to me that it's really hard for organizations to get funding for data-related positions. Something to think about…
The budget! Oh man, did you hear about the budget?!?
There are other takeaways too, like: there's always a Tim Hortons, unless you're looking for one; and, be absolutely sure you've booked your new flight for the correct day before you cancel your old flight; and, we really need to do something about daylight savings time changes, but i don't really want to talk about those.
Oh, and also I was interviewed by a journalist and showed up in a news article!
See you next year in Halifax!
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