HEALTH, HOUSING AND INTEGRATED SERVICES NETWORK (CA)

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Program Description
The Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) was created in 1991 with funding from the Pew Charitable Trusts, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Ford Foundation to support the individual efforts of local nonprofit agencies in developing service-supported housing for those most in need— people coping with extreme poverty and mental illness, addiction, or HIV/ AIDS. With eight offices around the country and a staff of nearly 100, CSH works with a network of 332 nonprofit partners that have assisted in the development of more than 8, 000 supportive housing apartments.

The California office of CSH established a program called the Health, Housing and Integrated Services Network to provide high-quality health, social, and vocational services to tenants and to lay the groundwork for long-term sustainable funding for these critical services. The Network went through an 18-month planning process to design a nationally replicable model to integrate an array of health insurance, vocational, and social service funding with permanent housing for individuals with special needs, using a service delivery model that could be sustained under "pay-for-performance" contracting.

Although the program is not specifically targeted for returning prisoners, individuals who were formerly incarcerated certainly fall within the populations of people served by this program. Service providers from different sectors— primarily health care, HIV/ AIDS, mental health, drug or alcohol treatment, vocational, and social services— work together as a team. These teams use a client-centered, flexible approach that works closely with individuals, educating them about their health issues, teaching them to anticipate and prevent crises, building tenant relationships with one another, and offering links to employment and other programs in the community. Service teams now operate in more than 13 different sites across the state.

Program Goals
A primary goal of the Network is to demonstrate that by providing a package of health, social, and employment services to people living in supportive housing, costs can be substantially reduced for the use of hospital emergency rooms, psychiatric inpatient hospitalization, and even jails.

Networking, Partnering & Collaboration
More than 25 nonprofit mental health, substance abuse, health care, HIV/ AIDS, employment, and social service organizations and four county public health departments have joined with other government representatives, consumers, and advocates to develop and implement the Network. Taking the first steps toward establishing sustainable funding, the project has brought together policymakers, providers, and advocates in several forums on health care, welfare, and employment policy.

Outcomes
CSH is collaborating with research partners at the San Francisco Department of Public Health and Vanderbilt University to gather and analyze data needed to document the cost-effectiveness of the project. The analysis will include data on service use from the mental health, hospital, and jail systems, and will compare them with program service costs.

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