In 2014, Pierce County Human Services engaged Focus Strategies to assist with the refinement of the existing intake and assessment tools used by the community's Centralized Intake (CI) system, Access Point for Housing (A4PH). To inform their recommendations for system improvement, Focus Strategies conducted an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of that system. The analysis focused on the effectiveness of the AP4H system in conducting intake and assessment and making referrals to housing programs. Followed are key results of that system:

• The Centralized Intake assessment tool was inefficient and often duplicative of the intake processes used by program providers.
• Centralized Intake did not utilize objective criteria to prioritize access to housing programs.
• Provider-imposed eligibility criteria created access barriers for higher need households.
• Homeless system objectives were to fill provider vacancies using the criteria for acceptance defined by the providers (i.e. the clients the providers want to house), rather than to find an appropriate placement for every household that goes on the wait list.
• Centralized Intake data was not integrated with HMIS, making it very difficult to track what happens with clients from the time they contact CI until they enter housing.
• There were side doors and parallel system was not right sized to meet the need, relying too heavily on temporary housing and not enough on permanent housing options.

• Coordinated Entry Community Meeting Q&A (February 2015)
• Coordinated Entry Community Meeting Presentation (February 2015)
• Assessment of Centralized Intake (February 2015)
• Centralized Intake Assessment Executive Summary (January 2015)