DESCRIPTION OF HMIS IN MONTGOMERY COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
In 2001 Congress directed HUD to collect data and provide analysis on the extent of homelessness in the United States and the effectiveness of the McKinney Act Programs including:
Developing unduplicated counts of clients served at the local level;
Analyzing patterns of use of people entering and exiting the homeless assistance system; and
Evaluating the effectiveness of these systems.
In response to this congressional directive, HUD has mandated that Continuums of Care Affiliations establish workable and efficient Homeless Management Information Systems (HMIS) by October 2004.
Our HMIS-MetSYS Project is MontgomeryCounty's response to the HUD and congressional directives. The County Department of Housing and Community Development known herein as (MCHCD), in conjunction with MetSYS Inc., a computer software company located in Sacramento, California, administers the HMIS-MetSYS project in MontgomeryCounty.
MetSYS Inc. administers the central server, while the Department of Housing & Community Development (MCHCD) assists in the initial set-up of Participating Agencies onto the system, provides initial training and oversees the overall implementation and compliance of the project.
The MetSYS system utilizes Internet-based technology in order to assist homeless service providers and other service related agencies across MontgomeryCounty in capturing information about the clients they serve.
The overall goals of the HMIS are to:
1) Enable service providers to measure the effectiveness of their interventions
2) Facilitate analysis within the Montgomery County Continuum of Care (CoC) in order to assess service needs and gaps within the system, and in so doing inform public policy about the extent and nature of homelessness in Montgomery County.
These goals are accomplished through the analysis and release of data that is grounded in the actual experiences of homeless persons and the service providers who assist them in shelters and other homeless assistance programs throughout the County.
