In this issue

• Housing Trust Fund accepting pre-applications for affordable housing projects
• What have researchers learned about employment for people with mental health conditions?
• Report shows that the BEST program works

Events and announcements

Division of Vocational Rehab annual report is now available

• Read the report

Foundational Community Supports: Permanent Supportive Housing:

Preparing for a Fidelity Review Training presented by Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH)

• Tuesday, March 9
  9:30 to 11 a.m.
   Register

Landlord Outreach Learning Community call:

Advocating for and building effective relationships with landlords

• Wednesday, March 10 9:30 to 11 a.m.
  Register

Job developers community of practice call:

Web-based Tools to Identify Interests and Work Values

• Thursday, March 11
  9 a.m.
  Register

Best practices in clinical supervision: Two-part webinar series:

Training will be presented in two sessions. Please register for both part 1 and part 2

• Monday March 22 and Monday March 29
  1 to 3 p.m.
  Part 1
  Part 2

Job development training presented by Pat Tucker

• Wednesday, March 24
  1 to 3 p.m.
  Register

DBHR monthly housing topical webinar:

Landlord mitigation and tenancy preservation programs

• Thursday, March 25
  8:30 to 10 a.m.
  Register

Golden Thread of documentation webinar series

• Thursday, April 22 to Thursday, May 27
  9:30 to 11:30 a.m. Register for all six events

Live captioning available

Communication Access Real-time Transcription (CART) services, or live closed captioning, is available for the above events, on demand. Scheduling CART services requires a three-week lead-time. To request this accommodation, please submit a request to Austin.Alexander@hca.wa.gov  as soon as possible. If you make your request less than a week in advance of the event, our language access manager cannot guarantee that a CART writer will be available.

Housing Trust Fund accepting pre-applications for affordable housing projects

Washington State Department of Commerce is accepting pre-applications (formerly referred to as “Stage 1” applications) for affordable housing projects that plan to seek funding in the 2021 and 2022 competitive funding cycles.

Pre-applications submitted will not be scored and funding decisions will not be made. The pre-applications will be used to assess the statewide need and project pipeline for the Housing Trust Fund in the upcoming 2021 and 2022 competitive funding cycles.

A pre-application is not a requirement to apply for future competitive funding rounds.

Pre-applications may be submitted for multifamily/rental projects, homeownership-type projects, shelters, housing preservation, innovative housing, and any other HTF eligible project types.

Pre-applications are due by 12 p.m. on Thursday, March 25.

Apply or learn more

What have researchers learned about employment for people with mental health conditions?

Join the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation at Boston University as they highlight employment research published in the Psychiatric Rehabilitation journal. The webinar will go over what researchers are learning about employment for people with mental health conditions.

• Monday, March 29
  9 to 10 a.m.
  Register

Report shows that the BEST program works

Becoming Employed Starts Today (BEST) provided supported employment services in four local mental health provider organizations. BEST was a federally funded, five-year pilot that ran from March 1, 2015 to September 30, 2019.

Employment specialists helped individuals obtain and maintain employment by using the Individual Placement and Support model of supported employment (IPS-SE).

The report on BEST showed significant improvements in employment rates. Participants self-reported improvements in well-being, functioning, retention in the community, and school attendance. Read the full report.