COVID-19 Webinar Series

April 1, 2020  |  Videos, Data and Graphics, Toolkits and Training Materials

Alliance staff and other experts will be discussing various tools, guidance, and strategies relating to how providers and homelessness system leaders can respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

This page will be updated as subsequent webinars are conducted. View webinar recordings, slides, and other resources below, and register for COVID-19 webinars here. For an extensive list of resources relating to COVID-19 and homelessness, visit the Resource page of the Framework for an Equitable COVID-19 Homelessness Response

 

Understanding & Planning for Federal Funding

First in the COVID-19 Webinar Series, this webinar provides an overview of federal stimulus funding to address the novel coronavirus pandemic among people experiencing or at risk of homelessness. It also provides recommendations for how community and system leaders should be planning and strategizing to implement those funds to achieve maximum benefit to reduce infection, negative health outcomes, and homelessness.

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Protocols for Addressing Sheltered and Unsheltered Homelessness

Homeless system providers and health systems are developing local COVID-19 approaches for people experiencing homelessness that are consistent with emerging guidance from the CDC, and informed by the experience of people on the ground working hard to keep clients and staff as safe as possible.

This webinar will present the guidance developed by the State of California with the University of California San Francisco Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, and protocols being used by Abode Services in the San Francisco Bay Area. Guidance and protocols will include suggestions for shelter and emergency housing providers, outreach workers, and coordinating public health systems for how to reduce risk for the most vulnerable in unsheltered and congregate settings.

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Serving and Supporting Unsheltered People During COVID-19

This webinar, facilitated by Iain De Jong of OrgCode Consulting, Inc., examines the following:

  • a rationale for why and under which conditions street outreach should continue at this time
  • examining and re-configuring the workflow for responding to unsheltered homelessness
  • engagement precautions and considerations; supporting and responding to encampments
  • prioritizing who to see
  • harm reduction considerations
  • responding to food insecurity
  • protocols for encountering ill or deceased unsheltered persons

This webinar is a reprise of the webinar Iain De Jong provided for the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, with some slight modifications.

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Supporting People Remotely in Housing Programs During COVID-19

This webinar, facilitated by Iain De Jong of OrgCode Consulting, Inc., highlights a number of considerations for staff that work in Rapid Re-Housing (RRH) and Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) programs to support people remotely during the coronavirus pandemic.

Topics covered in the webinar include: staff wellness; communicating with program participants; considerations for prioritizing time and who to serve; staying connected; supporting financial matters; supporting harm reduction; addressing food security; changing support plans; assisting with crisis planning; and supporting landlords. This webinar is a condensed version of the original 90-minute webinar topic provided by OrgCode on March 31.

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Working with FEMA to Address Homelessness During the Pandemic

To respond to the COVID-19 pandemic among people experiencing homelessness, 48 US states so far have declared states of emergency and many have begun applying for FEMA assistance to aid their efforts. Utilizing federal funding through FEMA can have a major impact in a community’s ability to ensure that people experiencing homelessness and those that serve them are safe and minimizing the risk of acquiring and transmitting the disease. It is paramount that States pursue FEMA funds and strategize how to use these funds strategically with other federal, state, and local dollars in their homelessness response.

This webinar focuses on the importance of following a framework for planning on the use of FEMA funding, an brief overview of FEMA and guidance on the types of assistance and eligible activities FEMA funding typically supports, and the experience of two states and their recent planning efforts and strategies to utilize FEMA funds to respond to the pandemic.

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Ensuring Racial Equity During the COVID-19 Homelessness Response

Early data suggests the COVID-19 pandemic is hitting Black communities particularly hard in the U.S. COVID-19 has exposed glaring health disparities across locales, bringing racial inequity into vivid focus. The subject of this webinar is on the homelessness system’s response to the intersection of COVID-19 and racial disparities.

Topics covered in the webinar include: racial disparities and health inequity, centering racial equity as a response to COVID-19 in the homelessness system, organizational inequity, and systems change.

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COVID-19 and Data Collection Resources for Your Community

It is advisable for homeless service providers to capture data on COVID-19 status within the population they serve.  This information is useful for public health planning, public and private funding allocations that are based on area need, as well as research to inform best practices around this type of crisis. 

This webinar provides information related to HMIS data collection, privacy concerns, mobile data collection, as well as research and population sampling to determine the degree to which COVID-19 has impacted the homeless community.  Experts in these areas will provide important information and share tools that will help your data collection efforts in the field.

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Federal Funding to Address Homelessness and COVID-19: Ask the Experts

The CARES Act provided important new financial resources for addressing homelessness, both through grants to communities’ homelessness systems and through direct payments to most low-income individuals and families.

This webinar provides details about what new money is available and how to access it. It will also update listeners on the prospects for additional resources in upcoming legislation. Experts in federal policy are on the call to answer all your questions!

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Effective Advocacy During the Pandemic

Ensuring resources and responses are tailored to and reach people experiencing homelessness during the coronavirus crisis requires effective advocacy at all levels of government. Hear from national, state, and local experts about how you can up your advocacy game to benefit those who are most vulnerable during the pandemic.

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Focusing on People Who Are Unsheltered

As communities struggle to manage the intersection of the coronavirus pandemic and homelessness, many efforts have been focused on people who are sheltered. In the meantime, thousands of unsheltered people are unable to comply with social distancing or preventative hygiene recommendations because they are unsheltered.

This webinar focuses on making unsheltered homelessness an immediate priority during the pandemic, including by increasing street outreach and health services and getting unsheltered people into both shelter and housing as quickly as possible.

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Using Your Data to Analyze Racial Disparities During the Pandemic

Because of historic and ongoing structural racism, the coronavirus pandemic is hitting communities of color particularly hard. That same historic and structural racism also makes people of color more likely to experience homelessness. Homelessness systems and programs must understand and address the intersection of these two crises, and this webinar features a way to gather and analyze data to determine whether people of color experiencing homelessness are being equitably protected and served during the pandemic.

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Making Housing Happen in Difficult Times

The best way to socially distance is from home. So even as we focus on addressing immediate healthcare and shelter needs, it is important not to lose our commitment to getting people experiencing homelessness into permanent housing as rapidly as possible.
 
This webinar will feature system leaders and providers from communities around the country that are continuing to implement effective systemic permanent housing responses to homelessness through coordinated entry and creative housing options that take into account the additional vulnerability of COVID-19.
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Helping Survivors of Domestic Violence and Trafficking Stay Safe During the Pandemic

In this webinar, the Alliance and partner organizations explore strategies to help survivors of domestic and sexual violence and trafficking stay safe during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Leaders working in the intersection of housing, homelessness, domestic violence and trafficking share how their organizations meet the crisis and permanent housing needs of survivors and how they are expanding and modifying practices to improve shelter, housing, diversion/prevention and responses to survivors living without shelter.

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A Framework for COVID-19 Homelessness Response

Although the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately threatens people experiencing homelessness, unprecedented levels of federal funding are flowing into states and localities to help meet the need. Homelessness could grow or shrink, depending on how these resources are used.

A Framework for COVID-19 Homelessness Response was developed to help communities use these new funds to meet public health and economic recovery goals on homelessness, strengthen the homeless response system for the future, and do it all with a racial justice and equity orientation. This webinar explores the Framework, its latest updates, and how communities can use it to keep people experiencing homelessness safe and put us on the path to a better future.

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Data Collection & COVID-19: Learning from the Field

This webinar demonstrates the value to homelessness systems of collecting and entering data related to COVID-19. It also covers workflow examples and how communities are managing the rapidly changing data collection needs they encounter. Finally, it covers ways in which providers are using data to make decisions about service delivery and prioritization.

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Communities Using Data to Analyze Racial Disparities During the Pandemic – Here’s Where You Can Start

Because of historic and ongoing structural racism, the coronavirus pandemic is hitting communities of color hard. That same historic and structural racism also makes people of color more likely to experience homelessness. Homelessness systems and programs must understand and address the intersection of these two crises, and this webinar features four communities that are beginning to gather and analyze data to determine whether people of color experiencing homelessness are being equitably protected and served during the pandemic. Important data points regarding race and ethnicity are discussed, including some brainstorming on shaping the response if disparities are found.

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Lifting up the Sky – Addressing the Pandemic & Indigenous Homelessness

Native people have a unique perspective on homelessness: since 1492, Native people have been fighting for relatives who were forcibly removed from their homelands. In 2020, Native people continue to battle the embedded, inequitable systems that keep relatives captured in homelessness. Indigenous people have some of the highest rates of homelessness, but Native-led solutions can provide answers for not just Native homelessness, but for all of our relatives who are experiencing homelessness.

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