BNLs & HIFIS 4

According to the Built for Zero Canada Campaign:

A By-Name List is a real-time list of all people experiencing homelessness in your community.  It includes a robust set of data points that support coordinated access and prioritization at a household level and an understanding of homeless inflow and outflow at a system level.  This real-time actionable data supports triage to services, system performance evaluation and advocacy (for the policies and resources necessary to end homelessness).

By this definition, HIFIS 4 is arguably already a By-Name List (BNL), particularly if you're using it as intended. In other words, if you have integrated clusters set up, and your partner agencies are sharing data system-wide, then you already have a BNL!

How's that? Well, if a BNL is a list of all people experiencing homelessness, and all of your partner agencies that serve homeless people are putting their client's information into HIFIS 4, and you're collecting the names and additional information for all the clients you're serving, then... yeah... HIFIS 4 is your community's By-Name List.

Of course there is a catch. It's not quite that easy. There are a few differences between HIFIS 4 and your BNL.

Housed vs. Homeless

HIFIS 4 is going to include not only clients who are currently homeless but also clients who are currently housed. This could be intentional - some of your partner agencies serve people who are at risk of homelessness but haven't become homeless (yet). Or it could be a by-product of your services - some of your partner agencies help house clients and follow up with them after they're housed.

In order to translate your Client List in HIFIS 4 to a By-Name List, you'll need to include only those clients who are currently homeless, or at least exclude those who are currently housed.

Active vs. Inactive

HIFIS 4 is also going to include not only clients who are currently relevant, but also clients who you haven't seen in a while. For example, if you've been using HIFIS 4 for three years, you may have had a client stay in shelters three years ago then disappear. You don't know conclusively that they're housed - they could be in a different community, or in jail, or deceased - but you do know that you haven't seen them in years. For your By-Name List, you shouldn't be including those who are not actively homeless.

In order to translate your Client List in HIFIS 4 to a By-Name List, you'll also need to include only those clients who have been active recently, however that may be defined in your community. Perhaps clients who have received any services within the past three months?

Non-Consenting Clients

This is the trickiest aspect to account for. HIFIS 4 only includes clients who have consented to data collection and sharing, which means that clients that you know about (known homelessness) but who have not consented for you to collect their information should not be in HIFIS, but that makes it difficult to say that HIFIS 4 contains a complete list of all clients who are known to be homeless.

However, a lot of communities have a similar requirement that clients must consent to join the By-Name List, so it could be that consent forms would cover both addition to the By-Name List and to HIFIS 4.

One thing to consider is what might be done with the known-but-anonymous clients!

Check out our free Guide to BNLs in HIFIS!