Continuum of Care Program Manager for Underrepresented Populations, Office of Homeless Services

Posted by City of Philadelphia on November 19, 2019

The mission of the Office of Homeless Services is to make homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring. OHS works collaboratively with a broad-based network of public and private providers focused on utilizing practices that are informed by data, honor the different perspectives of all stakeholders, and are trauma-informed. OHS works to maximize resources while monitoring emerging trends, tracking progress, and shifting priorities as needed.

OHS is the Collaborative Applicant to HUD for the Philadelphia Continuum of Care, and is located within the Health and Human Services Cabinet, which includes the Departments of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services (DBHIDS), Human Services (DHS), Mayor’s Office of Community Empowerment and Opportunity, and Public Health (DPH).

Job Description
The Office of Homeless Services (OHS) is the public entity charged with the policy, planning, and coordination of the City’s response to homelessness. Homeless Services is the Collaborative Applicant for the Philadelphia Continuum of Care (CoC) funded by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, and coordinates an inter-agency planning body committed to coordinating and implementing a community-wide response to addressing homelessness in the City of Philadelphia. As Collaborative Applicant, OHS has a responsibility to develop a community-wide process that encompasses coordination of nonprofit homeless providers, victim service providers, faith-based organizations, governments, businesses, advocates, public housing agencies, school districts, social service providers, mental health agencies, hospitals, universities, affordable housing developers, law enforcement, organizations that serve veterans, and homeless and formerly homeless individuals.

The purpose of the Continuum of Care Program Manager for Under-Represented Populations is to develop and implement effective best practices to understanding and addressing homelessness as it relates to the effectiveness and efficiency of building community-based capacity for those sub-populations of unaccompanied youth (ages 12 – 24), youth identifying within the LGBTQ community, the LGBTQ community, the Aging community (55+) and all persons identified as Chronically homeless.

This position is part of the Planning Unit in the Division of Policy, Planning, and Performance and will be responsible for providing knowledge and leadership for programming focused on Under-Represented Populations experiencing housing instability and homelessness.

Reports to: Director of Planning.

Essential Functions

Responsibilities:

• Spearhead efforts to develop a system that makes homeless rare, brief and nonrecurring for all people in Philadelphia, across all subpopulations related to, but not limited to unaccompanied youth (ages 12 – 24), youth presenting within the LGBTQ community, the LGBTQ community, the Aging community (55+) and all identifying as chronically homeless.
• Provide a quantitative analysis of the identified trends and outcomes with the use of complex data sets (from the HMIS database and internal and external sources) related to the above memtioned vulnerable sub-populations at-risk of or experiencing homnelessness delivered to community-based leaders and partners to establish stronger stability among funding resources.
• Coordinate efforts around community stakeholder engagement in the development and implementation of a strategic plan to prevent and end homelessness for previous mentioned vulnerable subpopulations that aligns with the Roadmap to Homes strategic plan’s goals, objectives, and priorities to bring the community’s vision on unaccompanied youth (ages 12- 24), youth presenting within the LGBTQ community, the LGBTQ community, the Aging community (55+) and all persons identified as Chronically homeless to action into greater focus.
• Provide a qualitative analysis through the development of community stakeholder engagement by analyzing system strengths, weaknesses, gaps, and opportunities to innovate and adapt to different needs and circumstances to ensure system effectiveness and efficiency.
• Mobilizing people with lived experience of homelessness and housing instability to participate and be represented in system planning processes.
• Participate and Manage the A Way Home America Challenge to End Youth Homelessness initiative to ensure coordination among key stakeholder are involved to help implement best practices to end youth homelessness.
• Facilitate community-based engagement around measuring and track trends related to, but not limited to racial and other disparities in system access, outcomes, and gaps in the system as a whole for the above- mentioned subpopulations and will use data visualization tools to produce custom reports to present and promote system change with a wide range of public and private community members.
• Perform within the framework of implementation of the CoC’s Roadmap to Homes strategic plan.
• CoC planning activity tasks related to the Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) process and identify grants and other funding opportunities related to under-represented subpopulations at-risk or experiencing homelessness.
• Assist with developing a plan for allocating funds, evaluating cost effectiveness and underspending to ensure the coordinated housing crisis system can effectively serve the under-represented sub-populations.
• Assisting with referral oversight and management of the CoC’s Coordinated Entry (CE) process (also known as CEA-BHRS) with a specific focus as the representative for the under-represented subpopulations to ensure that the CE system is well advertised and easily accessed by people seeking services or housing, including people with disabilities and people with Limited English Proficiency, and is affirmatively marketed in order to reach eligible persons who are least likely to seek assistance in the absence of special outreach, in accordance with the federal requirements.
• Coordinate special initiatives related to under-represented subpopulations at-risk of or experiencing homelessness and engagement of people with lived experience, including but not limited to outreach, training, policy development and project implementation.
• Serve as a liaison between agencies administering funding to under-represented subpopulations homelessness programs and the Office of Homeless
• Services by providing project management and administrative support to the various CoC Sub-committees to achieve the goals and objectives outlined in the strategic plan.
• Facilitate outreach efforts to build relationships with service providers outside the homeless assistance system who are engaged in delivering high-quality services to under-represented sub-populations at risk of or facing homelessness.
• Be the catalyst for collaboration between governmental and nongovernmental agencies.
• Create structures and implement processes to facilitate cross-governmental system collaboration to address system-level strategies to prevent homelessness following the exit of child welfare, juvenile justice, criminal justice, or other public systems.
• Create processes to facilitate cross-system collaboration with Federal public-sector funding entities including but not limited to: Health and Human Services (HHS), Veterans Affairs (VA).
• Other duties as required.

Learn more and apply: https://jobs.smartrecruiters.com/CityofPhiladelphia/743999698601255-continuum-of-care-program-manager-for-underrepresented-populations