This month, help us celebrate the incredible work Frances does as a CalAIM Navigation Coordinator (Outreach Team). Housing for Health OC is so thankful for all the work Frances does for CalAIM clients and for being part of the HHOC & Friendship Shelter Team!
6:00AM: My alarm goes off at 6, but i normally don't get out of bed until 6:30AM; then from 6:30-7:30AM I do my meditation and journaling for the day. I do this every day because, at this point, it's routine. I find my routine very beneficial to my personal wellbeing. Often the day has many twists and turns and I can't plan for everything, so I find starting my morning with one thing that I know I can plan on is comforting.
7:40ish I leave the house. My hours are 8-4:30PM and today my first client is in Lake Forest. I live in Costa Mesa and with morning traffic I will probably arrive by 8:10 or so.
9:00AM: I called my Client several times and texted him with no response. While I had a feeling that he may not show up because I hadn't heard back from him yesterday, when I reached out to confirm his appointment, I made my way there anyway hoping to see him. I knocked on his mother's door (where he is currently staying) and she said she had not seen him in a few days. I put a note into our record system to reflect my contact attempt and notes.
Our team has a webinar training at 11AM today at our Administrative Office so I made my way over there next.
9:20-9:45:
I answered some outreach voicemails from the weekend that I was not able to get to the day before.
I speak to a woman who had a young daughter who was looking for shelter in Newport Beach. I listen and provide them with appropriate contact numbers.
I talked to another individual who left a message stating he was sleeping in his vehicle in South County. I go through and explain the CalAIM Navigation Program in detail, making sure he knows to contact me again tomorrow should he be interested and a feel like a good fit, after taking it all in.
Individuals who have CalOptima (Medi-Cal) insurance and are At Risk or Experiencing Homelessness in South County are people that are eligible for CalAIM and potential new referrals for our team.
10AM-11AM: Emails are piling up and making sure I remember to go through them all can often get overwhelming, I want to make sure I never miss any. What helps me is to write a numbered list of the exact tasks I need to get done in the exact order I will do them. I'm a very visual person, so this helps me from forgetting, otherwise it's hard for me to remember. I have my emails up on the big monitor and the news on on my small monitor. I also made myself a cup of coffee. This was a nice unwind hour.
11AM-12PM: We watch a training webinar on attentive listening and building rapport; afterward we had a discussion about it as a team.
12-12:30: I took my lunch. I made a PB&J& Nutella sandwich. It was very yummy. I also played some candy crush on my phone.
12:30-1PM: We had a brief training about new source of funding program - we talked about how to navigate those funds/who is elligible/etc.
1-3PM: My team and I did the riveting task of file auditing. It's very tedious work but we kind of make it fun when we all do it together.
During this time I also took a call from one of my clients who was just exited from one of our shelters. He was going to transfer over to me as his housing coordinator so we set a time to meet later in the week. He was not happy with his current situation. Sometimes, that is the difficult challenge of working on outreach - I wish I could build individual's a home or give them shelter immediately and I unfortunately do not have that power. So I listened and validated his concerns.
3:30-4:30: I end my last hour of the day auditing our team notes and making sure people are putting in compliant and coherent notes into our record keeping system. The other lead and I do this mid-month so my supervisor has everything they need at the end of the months billing period, and no one has to scramble.
After work I signed up for a yoga class from 7-8 PM, and I was already dreading it. After this administratively heavy day, I am feeling pretty lazy and, honestly, don't even want to go; but I know that I always feel 10x better afterward.
Tomorrow I meet with three clients, and assist another with receiving his furniture. I am looking forward to that.
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