Agenda Package - City of Vernon

Evaluation of Homelessness Strategy for the North Okanagan
10. Build into the strategic plan a recogn¡tion that the homelessness challenge is a dynamic
situation and thus program flexibility is an important pre-requisite to success.ot Being
pro-active and flexible requires a system of staying in touch with evolving client needs;
evolving community circumstances; and the dynamic political/funding environment.
The Partners in Action Committee is a particular useful tool in this regard. The
utilization of Action Teams serves a valuable responsive role, which needs to be
articulated in the Strategic Plan. However what additionally needs to be made clear is
how early warning efforts might best be triggered and how pre-planning might better
position the organization to deal with certain crises and/or take advantage of selected
opportunities when they arise,
6.2 ProgrammingRecommendations:
While programming is a logical outcome of the strateg¡c planning effort, during the
course of the investigation a number of discussions focused on various aspects of programming.
Without pre-judging the relative merits of these ideas and suggestions in terms of programming,
which is best left to the strategic planning effort where priorities are defined by those engaged
in the planning process, the following suggestions/recommendations are proposed:
o Communication amongst agencies is very good but it could be better. Moving forward it
is important to improve on interagency communication.
o There needs to be a greater focus on programming that adequately accommodates
concurrent disabilities/issues.
o The challenge of homelessness is not a single event but an ongoing effort. A stable
funding base is critical to long term success.
o There is a gap in transitional housing for women, youth and seniors (the emerging
homeless) that needs to be addressed.
o A detox centre/service continues to be a critical, unfilled need for Vernon and the North
Okanagan.
o Programming tends to be driven by the availability of funding first and less by priority
need.
o Homelessness is changing as are the homeless. lt is important to match programming
with these changes.
¡ Some form of succession planning is important if ongoing momentum and effectiveness
of efforts is to be maintained.
o Future programming should focus on a hand up not a hand out. Some individual
accountability should be attached to more of the programming efforts'
o Volunteers are an important component of programming but they often lack the skills
necessary to be effective.
" Also it seems that the availability of potential funding sources can also be quite a dynamic
Ll'F'.
November 201.0
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