Board releases standards to gauge success of providers helping the homeless
A nonprofit board that has been working on ways to measure the effectiveness of homeless service providers has finalized four principles that can be used to compare different groups.
“This sounds like not that big a deal, but trying to get all the operators, all the public funders, all the private funders and individuals who have experienced homelessness to agree to a few things has been a little bit of a challenge, but we got there,” said Haney Hong, president and CEO of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association.
The association’s educational foundation created the Public Regional Outcomes Standards Board in February 2022 as a way of gauging the effectiveness of programs aimed at the social and public good, with a focus on homelessness in its first year.
A full year later, the PROS Board’s first four standards to measure homeless program are: outcome, case information, process improvements and data sharing.
Under outcome, Hong said homeless service providers will report the long-term housing outcomes of individuals they serve to determine if their clients ended up back on the streets.
Under case information, the providers will report how well they share appropriate case information with other providers that may serve the same client.
The standard on process improvement will look at whether a provider makes continuous improvements to its operation.
The final standard will gauge how a provider shares relevant data with others in the region. Hong said large homeless service providers do share data although they are not required to, but some large churches with homeless programs do not. The standard also will consider the quality of data being shared, he said.
Hong said the PROS board’s original goal was to have four to six standards finalized by the end of last year. With four accomplished, he said the board wants to continue meeting to create another six standards, which will include homeless prevention and racial equity.
The board is expected to have finalized all standards by the end of the year, he said. Once completed, donors and municipalities will be able to use the standards to determine who to work with or fund.
“Now we’re going to get to a place where eventually people can make apples to apples comparisons,” he said.
