Hello everyone - hope things are well with each of you. Dave Buck, Dave Deci, Ken Kraybill and I have been working on the next meeting. To do so we made a careful study of your evaluations (thank you!) as well as the informal discussions and comments that were made in Santa Barbara. It has helped greatly to steer us towards our next meeting.

Specifically, the comments led us to base the next meeting on a theme - which we decided would be how we might be better advocates for those we serve. To most effectively advocate for those on the streets, we thought that "Best Practices" should be identified and presented. (an example in my mind might be the inpatient consult service for street clients in Boston) Those who feel they have a specific area that would be applicable are asked to submit them and think about how they might present them. We would like each of you to think of 2 or 3 aspects of your work that would be suitable. Given the typical time constraints, we are also hoping to have the selected best practices presented in focused, brief time periods. This (and new presenters who will describe their programs) will be targeted for day one. As we compile the best practices, we are planning to put them in a folder for replication to the group.

Another decision was to follow-up on the suggestion of several participants that we get a keynote speaker. The idea is that this person would build on the theme of advocacy. Several names were discussed, but we thought it would be a good idea to ask all of you for suggestions.

Finally, we wanted to ask all of you if the proposed date of October 31st - November 3rd was good for all of you. Houston seemed like the best choice and Dave's gang is willing to do all the hard work that this will require.

So - can all of you give us feedback on the following:

1. Two or three "best practices" you would like to talk about.

2. Candidates for a keynote speaker.

3. Acceptablility of the Oct. 31- Nov. 3rd dates.

Any other comments on the process so far are also very welcome.

Thank you!

Jim

Date is great.
Thank you Dave for being willing to host the 3rd annual in your hometown.


For keynote speaker, how about inviting a politician who has distinguished themselves through their advocacy for the homeless.

For example: San Francisco's Mayor Gavin Newsom has been a brave advocate and has done strong work through his Project Homeless Connect:
http://www.sfconnect.org/AboutUs/index.php/homeless_connect/phc_our_mission.html

The mission of Project Homeless Connect is to rally the city to support and create lasting solutions for homeless San Franciscans.

Project Homeless Connect (PHC) is a national best practice model that originated in San Francisco under Mayor Gavin Newsom's leadership in October 2004. PHC is now implemented in 32 cities across the United States. Every other month over 1500 individual community volunteers partner with city government, nonprofits and the private sector to provide a one-stop shop of health and human services for homeless San Franciscans. Services include medical, mental health, substance abuse, housing, dental, benefits, legal, free eyeglasses, California ID, food, clothing, wheelchair repair and more. The main goal of PHC is to transition the City's homeless off the streets and into permanent, supportive housing. As of June 2006, 18,107 volunteers have provided services to 10,642 homeless clients.

-mimi

Post edited by: Suzanne, at: 2007/02/22 06:48

Post edited by: Suzanne, at: 2007/02/23 06:54

That is a great idea! Do you think they would attend?

-Dave

Post edited by: Suzanne, at: 2007/02/23 06:54

Hi Jim and colleagues

I like the idea of advocacy as a theme.

Is anyone doing any work on advocating for our patients to our fellow medics? This is something which is exercising me greatly at the moment over here in the UK, where, despite universally funded healthcare, it is still difficult for homeless patients to access healthcare due to reluctance of the mainstream profession to engage.

If no one else has anything prepared on the subject, I might have something by November ; )

Best wishes

-Angela

Post edited by: Suzanne, at: 2007/02/23 06:53

Angela wrote:


Is anyone doing any work on advocating for our patients to our fellow medics? This is something which is exercising me greatly at the moment over here in the UK, where, despite universally funded healthcare, it is still difficult for homeless patients to access healthcare due to reluctance of the mainstream profession to engage.



Angela, This is a great topic for a new forum thread, why don't you start one, perhaps under the politics or education forums and see what type of responses people have.

-Suzanne

Post edited by: Suzanne, at: 2007/02/23 06:53

I agree. I think this is really the thing that makes us true advocates for our clients. I like to call it "inreach". Angela can do a presentation on this, but we will also want her to present her general work as a first time participant. She has an awesome program for teaching homeless health provision!