Street Outreach: Meeting Immediate Needs
Street outreach is at the heart of our efforts to connect with individuals and families experiencing unsheltered homelessness. Our outreach teams engage directly with people to address their most pressing needs, such as healthcare, emergency shelter, or housing interventions. This outreach involves a multi-faceted approach:
- Client Engagement: Building trust and initial connections to better understand and meet individual needs.
- Case Management: Providing ongoing support through a collaborative, client-driven process to ensure access to critical services and resources.
- Connection to Services: Guiding clients to interventions, including healthcare, mental health services, housing solutions, and more.
- Transportation Assistance: Helping clients reach essential appointments, shelters, and housing resources.
Empowering Clients Through Support
Case management is a collaborative and client-centered process designed to empower individuals impacted by homelessness. By focusing on each person’s unique needs and choices, we aim to enhance their quality of life. Key components of effective case management include:
- Intake & Needs Assessment: Understanding each client’s situation and needs through comprehensive evaluation.
- Service Planning & Monitoring: Developing personalized service plans and regularly assessing progress.
- Client Empowerment & Trust Building: Ensuring clients have a voice in their journey, with a trauma-informed approach that recognizes and addresses past experiences.
Streamlining Access to Housing Services
Coordinated Entry is a streamlined system designed to quickly assess households using an objective tool that identifies their level of vulnerability and housing barriers. Those with the greatest need are prioritized for available housing programs. This system ensures a fair and equitable distribution of resources, with:
- Homeless Service Access Points: Stationary and mobile access points for assessments, including local PATH teams and coordinated entry assessments using the VI-SPDAT tool.
- Prioritization: Focused efforts on securing permanent supportive housing for chronically homeless clients and rapid rehousing interventions for others.
Data-Driven Solutions with the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS)
The Atlanta CoC uses ClientTrack as its HMIS software, which collects and manages client-level data. This system, led by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs (DCA), tracks the provision of housing and services to people experiencing homelessness, ensuring accountability and informed decision-making.
Pathways to Stability
At Partners for HOME, we collaborate with direct service providers to coordinate interventions that connect individuals and families to stable housing solutions. Our housing services include:
- Diversion: This immediate intervention helps people avoid entering the homeless system by finding alternative housing solutions. Examples include negotiating returns to previous housing, reconnecting with family, or finding short-term accommodations.
- Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH): Long-term rental assistance combined with supportive services for households with at least one member who has a disability. PSH is effective for individuals experiencing chronic homelessness and often addresses complex needs, such as mental illness or physical disabilities.
- Rapid Rehousing (RRH): Designed to help individuals and families quickly exit homelessness and secure permanent housing without preconditions. Core components include housing identification, rental assistance, and case management tailored to each household’s needs.
Making a Lasting Impact
Our approach ensures that every interaction and intervention is driven by compassion, respect, and a commitment to lasting change. By working together, we can build a future where every Atlantan has a place to call home.
Transformative Work Behind the Scenes
Every day, our neighbors experience homelessness in Atlanta, often without public recognition. Beyond the headlines, a network of dedicated partners is creating real change. Through initiatives like the current bridge initiative, we aim to move 300 individuals from living under bridges and in encampments into emergency shelters and, ultimately, into stable housing. This initiative exemplifies our holistic approach: addressing both immediate needs and the root causes of homelessness.
Our partners, including Aniz, Gateway 24/7 Center, Frontline, HOPE Atlanta, Mercy Care, Step UP, and Zaban Paradies, provide housing navigation, unit acquisition, rental and utility assistance, and wrap-around services. These essential supports range from behavioral health care and food assistance to comprehensive case management and programs promoting economic mobility. Every action is taken with compassion, treating individuals with the dignity and respect they deserve while creating a sustainable path toward self-sufficiency.
