Bright Spot: Roanoke, VA | Working with Reluctant Providers on By-Name List Data

Keep a list of agencies contributing data to HMIS and your by-name list, plus another list of non-contributing agencies, so that you can continually encourage them to begin participating. 

Check out this Bright Spot If…

• You want to ensure your by-name list is comprehensive, even when working with reluctant community partners.
• You want to try it!

Summary

A work group identified a main issue: names from a rescue mission were missing from the by-name list (BNL). Therefore, a small team took the rescue mission list and compared it to the BNL. They separated those names that were not already on the BNL and checked HMIS to see if old records existed for these names. All but two had been previous clients.

A team of VA and CoC outreach staff agreed to meet at the rescue mission once a week to conduct VI-SPDATs on-site, so that veterans do not have to physically come to a different office. That team reviews names to be added to the by-name list.

Key Action: Create Goals and Milestones

The group agreed that they would have met their goal once the by-name list matched the list kept by the rescue mission, in real-time.

Key Action: Adapting to Other Contexts

A significant part of the group’s success depended on the relationship between the CoC and the rescue mission. The group was also fortunate that there was only a single rescue mission in the region.