This report is intended for communities who are using HIFIS version 4.0.59.1 to be able to easily extract and report on monthly data points directly from HIFIS.

FAQ

Where’s the data in this report coming from?

Can you tell me more about these statuses?

Can you tell me more about the Chronically Homeless and All Homeless Versions of this report?

How is Transitional Housing status handled?

How is Unknown Housing status handled?

What parameters are available for this report?

What’s the Date Range for this report?

Which clients are included in this report?

What is the Number of Households? What about the Number of People?

How is Active Homelessness calculated?

How is Newly Identified calculated?

How is Aged In calculated?

How is Returned from Housing calculated?

How is Returned from Inactive calculated?

How is Total Inflow calculated?

How is Moved to Housing calculated?

How is Moved to Inactive calculated?

How is Total Outflow calculated?

How is Net Change calculated?

How is Net Change Percentage calculated?

Why are some people being counted as Newly Identified when they’ve been around for years?

Why do my Moved to Inactive numbers look ridiculously high for one month but they are normal for the next month?

I have more data discrepancies.

If we select the Indigenous Subpopulation, who is included?

If we select the Veteran Subpopulation, who is included?

If we select the Youth Subpopulation, who is included?

If we select the Family Subpopulation, who is included?

What MS SQL Server version is required to run this report?

What HIFIS version is required to run this report?

What tables are referenced in this report?

Where’s the data in this report coming from?

The report relies heavily on a new feature termed Client History Changes which is not a feature that users will often come across. On the Client Vitals screen of HIFIS there is a button called Display Vitals History which contains a record of every time a field value on the Vitals screen changed along with a timestamp corresponding to the change.

As of version 4.0.59.1, it now includes “Client State” changes, which contains a record of when the client becomes Active, Inactive, Archived, or Deceased.

Also new is the “Client Housing Status” on this screen, which contains a record of when the client becomes Homeless, Chronically Homeless, Housed, Transitional, or Unknown.

Can you tell me more about these statuses?

Each client always has a current Client Status and a current Housing Status. Both of these are displayed in the Client “Tombstone” on the left of the client file. Therefore, a single client could be in any of the following boxes at a given time:

The report identifies transitions from one box to another. For every transition, it assesses to see if the transition is relevant for the purposes of your monthly inflow/outflow reporting. Particularly, any transition that starts or ends in either the Active + Homeless or Active + Chronically Homeless boxes.

For example, a client who is actively chronically homeless but doesn’t have any interactions within HIFIS for a period of time will have their Client Status change from Active to Inactive, moving them from the Active + Chronically Homeless box to the Inactive + Chronically Homeless box. This transition is a relevant one and will be captured in the report.

However, if a client who is living in supportive housing passes away, they would move from the Active + Housed box to the Deceased + Housed box. This transition is irrelevant, and will not be captured in this report.

Can you tell me more about the Chronically Homeless and All Homeless Versions of this report?

There are currently two different versions of this report: one for only chronic homelessness, and the other for all homelessness. The main reason there are two different versions is because the chronic version includes an additional Aged In category which the all homelessness version does not include. Another reason is because of the database structure; “Homeless” and “Chronically Homeless” are actually mutually exclusive categories, etc. etc. there’s some technical reasons why it’s easier to manage this way. In the future, these two versions might be merged.

This documentation is generally true for both versions, although you will need to use a little bit of common sense to understand that when we make a statement like “clients who were homeless/chronically homeless,” we are probably talking about the report version.

How is Transitional Housing status handled?

The report looks up your Reaching Home Housing Continuum settings.

If you have Transitional set to Homeless, then clients with Transitional status are counted as Homeless (but not Chronically Homeless). So if a client moves from Homeless to Transitional, that’s not considered a transition at all.

If you have Transitional set to Housed, then clients with Transitional status are counted as Housed. So if a client moves from Homeless to Housed, that’s a Move to Housing.

How is Unknown Housing status handled?

Gaps are ignored; the client is assumed to keep the same status they had before they became Unknown. For example, if a client is in shelter and then misses a day, their housing status would move from Homeless to Unknown, but for the purposes of this report, the client would still continue to be considered Homeless.

Days spent Unknown do not accumulate towards becoming Chronically Homeless, so while this report is forgiving about missing data, it doesn’t completely let you off the hook.

Note that if a client has NEVER had any Housing History or Admissions data, there’s no prior housing status to fall back on (i.e. before the client was Unknown), so these clients are not included in the report. They could just as easily be housed clients who visited a drop-in centre one time as chronically homeless people living in encampments; there’s just no way to infer whether a client is homeless or not without any data!

What parameters are available for this report?

• Reporting Month - asks the user to select any date in the reporting month
• Show Detail - asks if the report should display a list of clients so that you can verify the data
• Current Service Provider [hidden] - automatically looks up the current Service Provider you are logged in at when you run the report
• Subpopulation

What’s the Date Range for this report?

The user selects a single date in the reporting month. The report will select the first day of that month to be the start of the date range. The last day of the date range is the last day of the same month.

Which clients are included in this report?

There are two different categories of clients that are included in this report.

The first group we will call the Active Pool. These are clients that are actively homeless at the end of the month. Clients are part of the Active Pool if they:

• Were Homeless (or Chronically Homeless, depending on your report version) on the last day of the Date Range,
• Were Active on the last day of the Date Range,
• Were either not part of a family, or were the Family Head, on the last day of the Date Range, and
• Match the selected Subpopulation

The second group we will call the Removed Pool. These are clients that were actively homeless at the start of the month, but were removed from active homelessness during the month. Clients are part of the Removed Pool if they:

• Were Homeless (or Chronically Homeless, depending on your report version) and Active at some point on or after the first day of the Date Range, but one of those statuses ended during the Date Range,
• Were not both Homeless (or Chronically Homeless) and Active on the last day of the Date Range,
• Were either not part of a family, or were the Family Head, on the last day of the Date Range, and
• Match the selected Subpopulation

What is the Number of Households? What about the Number of People?

As described in Which clients are included in this report?, the report only pulls data for clients who are either not part of a family (Singles) or who are the Family Head, for the last day of the Date Range. Counting these clients provides the number of households.

For each of these households, we count how many people are in the client’s family at the time (via the Family module), and the total number of individuals there equals the number of people.

Why do we do it this way? Previous versions of the report were simply counting clients. They looked at every individual client file to see if they were homeless/chronic/active/etc. But, the problem is that children would frequently go inactive or have missing data, so if the report said there were, say, 50 currently homeless, that number (50) would actually be a weird hybrid halfway in between the two values. Maybe there were only 45 households and some partners/dependents had data in their file, but there were actually 60 people and 10 of them were partners/dependents that had no data so weren't being captured. Now, the report is clearly and accurately telling you what you're counting.

How is Active Homelessness calculated?

It’s the Active Pool.

How is Newly Identified calculated?

A client is Newly Identified on the earliest date that they have both the Active client status and the Homeless (for the all homeless version) or the Chronically Homeless (for the chronic version) housing status. If that date was during the Date Range, and the client is part of the Active Pool, the client will be included on the report.

[Chronic Homelessness only] We also calculate the earliest date the client had the Chronically Homeless housing status. If they were chronically homeless before they became Active, that makes them Newly Identified.

How is Aged In calculated?

[Chronic Homelessness only] The report calculates the earliest date the client had the Chronically Homeless housing status. If the client was previously Active and Homeless, and the client is part of the Active Pool, and then became Chronically Homeless during the Date Range, that makes them Aged In.

How is Returned from Housing calculated?

A client is Returned from Housing if they:

• are part of the Active Pool,
• they had a transition during the Date Range from Housed to Homeless (or Chronically Homeless), and
• the client was Active at the time of the transition.

How is Returned from Inactive calculated?

A client is Returned from Inactive if they:

• are part of the Active Pool,
• they had a transition during the Date Range from Inactive to Active, and
• the client was Homeless (or Chronically Homeless) at the time of the transition.

If the client both moves from Housed to Homeless and Inactive to Active at the same time, they will be captured as Returned from Housing.

How is Total Inflow calculated?

It’s Newly Identified + Aged In + Returned from Housing + Returned from Inactive.

How is Moved to Housing calculated?

A client is Moved to Housing if they:

• are part of the Removed Pool,
• they had a transition during the Date Range from Homeless (or Chronically Homeless) to Housed, and
• the client was Active at the time of the transition.

How is Moved to Inactive calculated?

A client is Moved to Inactive if they:

• are part of the Removed Pool,
• they had a transition during the Date Range from Active to Inactive, Deceased, or Archived, and
• the client was Homeless (or Chronically Homeless) at the time of the transition.

How is Total Outflow calculated?

It’s Moved to Housing + Moved to Inactive

How is Net Change calculated?

It’s Total Inflow - Total Outflow

How is Net Change Percentage calculated?

It’s (Total Inflow - Total Outflow) / Last Month’s Active Homelessness * 100

Why are some people being counted as Newly Identified when they’ve been around for years?

To troubleshoot questions like this, go to the Vitals History. Look for the Client Housing Status and the Client State, (Tip: if you filter by the word “Client” you get both in the same screen, and filter out the other stuff.) then sort it by Date of Change.

Go through the client’s changes in order and try to imagine at each point, what combination of Housing Status and Activity Status would exist on that date. For example, in the client below, the client first became Homeless on 2017-02-01, but what was their Activity Status at the time? There isn’t one. The client didn’t become Active until 2017-08-30. (This suggests that the client was added on 2017-08-30, and somebody backdated some data.) So, when this client became homeless on 2017-02-01, there was no corresponding Activity Status. We will therefore treat them as Inactive + Homeless on 2017-02-01. When the client became Active on 2017-08-30, what was their Housing Status at the time? The most recent Housing Status from 2017-06-30 was Housed, so on 2017-08-30 the client was Housed + Active.

If you go through all of the client’s status changes, it turns out that this client was never actually Homeless + Active. So, if they became homeless today, they would be considered “Newly Identified” because it would be the first time they were Homeless + Active at the same time.

If that’s not accurate, you can fix your results by improving your data quality. For example, the client moved from Housed to Unknown on 2018-02-05. Since the Unknown status is ignored, we continue to treat them as Housed, but was that the date they previously became homeless in the real world? If so, be sure to add in a Housing History record that indicates the client is now homeless instead of leaving a big unknown gap.

Why do my Moved to Inactive numbers look ridiculously high for one month but they are normal for the next month?

On the date that you updated your software from 4.0.58.3 or lower to 4.0.59.1 or higher, a process ran to determine which clients were active, which were inactive, which were homeless, which were housed, and so on.

This was also the date that your inactivity policy kicked in for the first time. You could have had clients that were “Active” but with no activity for years and years, and then all of a sudden, on one date, 80% of your clients all became inactive on the same date.

I have more data discrepancies.

Another thing that we know about updating to 4.0.59.1 is that sometimes it didn’t determine “activity” properly, pre-update. We know that some clients have a blank pre-update activity status, instead of being listed as Active (which they probably should have been), or Inactive (which is, at least, some data instead of no data). To be on the safe side, we treat the absence of an activity status as “Inactive.” The reason for this is because the data looks exactly the same for the following two clients:

• Client A: Homeless and known in January. Software update in February resulted in having no activity status prior to February.
• Client B: First comes in contact with the system in February, and staff backdate data back to January.

As a result, a theoretically large number of clients who previously were known to your system pre-update, could be listed as Newly Identified if they now return to your system post-update.

If we select the Indigenous Subpopulation, who is included?

The report would only show clients that are part of the Active Pool or the Removed Pool, and, on the Client Vitals screen, have one of the following values in the Indigenous Status field:

• First Nations: Off-reserve
• First Nations: On-reserve
• Inuit
• Métis
• Non-Status

If you use custom look-up values, ensure that they roll up to an appropriate category. If the roll-up value is one of the listed options above, they will also be included in this indicator.

Note that the Active Pool and the Removed Pool only include individuals who are singles and family heads, so if there are Indigenous members of a household but the family head does not have one of the Indigenous Statuses listed above, the whole family would be excluded from this report.

If we select the Veteran Subpopulation, who is included?

The report would only show clients that are part of the Active Pool or the Removed Pool, and, on the Client Vitals screen, have one of the following values in the Veteran Status field:

• Veteran - Canadian Armed Forces
• Veteran - Allies
• Veteran - Civilian
• Former RCMP

If you use custom look-up values, ensure that they roll up to an appropriate category. If the roll-up value is one of the listed options above, they will also be included in this indicator.

Note that the Active Pool and the Removed Pool only include individuals who are singles and family heads, so if there are Veteran members of a household but the family head does not have one of the Veteran Statuses listed above, the whole family would be excluded from this report.

If we select the Youth Subpopulation, who is included?

The report would only show clients that are part of the Active Pool or the Removed Pool, who are youth.

Youth are defined by the Service Provider settings for the current Service Provider that the logged in user is running the report at. If, at the end of the Date Range, the client had an age that was between the Service Provider settings for youth, then they would be included in the report.

Note that the Active Pool and the Removed Pool only include individuals who are singles and family heads, so it would exclude anyone who is a dependent but fits the age category.

If we select the Family Subpopulation, who is included?

The report would only show clients that are part of the Active Pool or the Removed Pool, that was the head of a household of a Family that has more than 1 person in it, at the end of the Date Range. This data is pulled from the Family module.

What MS SQL Server version is required to run this report?

MS SQL Server 2016 or later

What HIFIS version is required to run this report?

HIFIS 4.0.59.1 or later

What tables are referenced in this report?

• HIFIS_AboriginalIndicatorTypes
• HIFIS_ClientHistoryChanges
• HIFIS_Clients
• HIFIS_Cluster
• HIFIS_ContinuumCategories
• HIFIS_Continuums
• HIFIS_GenderTypes
• HIFIS_GroupRoleTypes
• HIFIS_Groups
• HIFIS_Organizations
• HIFIS_People
• HIFIS_People_Groups
• HIFIS_VeteranStateTypes
• vw_ClientBasics

Changelog

• Chronic v12

• Adds previous month's data, total inflow and outflow, and net change month-to-month
• Corrects some issues where data wasn't balancing, particularly related to outflow

• All Homeless v7a and Chronic v11a

• Formatting (some text was being cut off and was unreadable)

• Chronic v11

• Brings chronic report in line with all homeless report - contains all updates up to all homeless v7

• All Homeless v7

• Small update to fix an issue where some clients would be counted as both returned from housed and returned from inactive

• All Homeless v6c

• The report now breaks down households and individuals.

• The previous version of the report was simply counting clients. It looked at every individual client file to see if they were homeless/chronic/active/etc. But, the problem is that children would frequently go inactive or have missing data, so if the report said there was, say, 50 currently homeless, that number (50) would actually be a weird hybrid halfway in between the two values. Maybe there were only 45 households and some partners/dependents had data in their file, but there were actually 60 people and 10 of them were partners/dependents that had no data so weren't being captured. Now, the report is clearly and accurately telling you what you're counting.
• Technically speaking, the new version of the report only looks at data for family heads and singles. So if people are showing up that shouldn't be, or aren't showing up that should be, check their family membership.

• New youth and family subpopulations.

• This is in addition to the previous report which also included an indigenous subpopulation.
• Note that the age range for youth is defined by the service provider details for the service provider that you're currently logged in at.

• Transitional housing is now treated differently.

• The report looks up your Reaching Home housing continuum settings. If you have transitional counting as homeless, then clients with transitional status will appear as currently homeless. If you have transitional counting as housed, then moves to transitional will count as moves to housing.
• Basically, the transitional status is still ignored, but it will be replaced with what you have it listed as "counting as."

• There's an update to the newly identified calculation.

• Previously, there was a bug where some newly identified clients weren't being captured that should have been. In this version, your newly identified numbers will be higher, but more accurate.

• Important bug fixes:

• HIFIS version 4.0.59 has a bug in it that hasn't been fixed yet that sometimes results in clients having duplicated status changes. Like, they become chronically homeless on Monday and then again on Tuesday. Or they become housed 3 times on January 3, where there is actually only one housing history record. These duplicated status changes were causing all kinds of issues with this report, including sometimes counting clients with duplicated housed statuses as being currently homeless, or not counting clients with duplicated unknown status who were recently homeless. This version should fix those errors.
• Another bug fix where clients who were already chronically homeless by the time they were first identified weren't getting counted properly.

• Overall performance enhancements (i.e. it should be faster)

• All Homeless v4

• Veteran and All Homeless have been consolidated into one report, with a parameter.
• The parameter now also allows you to filter and show just indigenous homelessness.
• Fixed a bug that caused the report date to display incorrectly
• Now includes a breakdown by family role
• New parameter allows you to choose to display a list of clients or not, so you could see where the totals are coming from.

• Chronic v10, Veteran v3, All Homeless v3 - Bug fix: stats were not calculating correctly for the month of December. Thanks to Laura in Hamilton for pointing this issue out.
• Chronic v9, Veteran v2, All Homeless v2 - This is a major change that fixes an issue where clients were being counted twice, which may have caused the report to show higher numbers than they should have been. This issue was present in all three versions of the report (chronic/veteran/all homeless), so all three have been updated.
• Veteran v1 and All Homeless v1 versions released
• Chronic V8 - multiple fixes, including:

• Speed enhancement
• Added sub-populations: gender, age, veteran, and indigenous
• Fixed an issue where Moved to Housing was not being reported correctly

• Chronic V6 - fixed an issue where Newly Identified was being counted as Aged In.
• Chronic V5 - updated to change how Deceased and Archived clients are handled. They are now considered to be Inactive; in previous versions they would have been ignored.
• Chronic V4 - initial public release