Request for Proposals: Homeless Health Equity Strategic Consultant
Purpose
The Lamoille Valley Housing and Homelessness Coalition seeks a professional consultant specializing in housing and healthcare to help assess Lamoille County’s healthcare access infrastructure as it applies to people who are housing insecure, housing unstable, or experiencing homelessness. The consultant will work for up to a year to create an Action Plan that will address healthcare access inequities in our county.
Background
Lamoille County’s affordable housing challenges are a significant contributor to homelessness and health inequity in the area. The wait for income eligible housing can be over a year, creating a bottleneck for those coming out of short term shelter. Housing and shelter organizations lack capacity to develop a cohesive strategic Homelessness Healthcare Action Plan that will address the shortage of affordable housing in a way that ensures access to healthcare and supports, and the shortfalls of our system were made glaring during the response to the pandemic. The Working Communities Challenge is convening a collaborative workgroup to address housing shortages, including Agency of Human Services, Vermont Department of Health, healthcare, housing, planning, land, shelter, faith, business, and other community partners.
Scope of Work
The consultant will work with the Working Communities Challenge (WCC), Lamoille Community House (LCH), and members of LVHHC, to design a sustainable, collaborative, strategic response to equitable access to healthcare in relation to all levels of housing instability and will:
- Document lessons learned from Lamoille County’s highly coordinated, multi-sector collaborative response to the pandemic.
- Document healthcare access for community members experiencing homelessness during all phases of the pandemic to identify barriers to equitable healthcare.
- Document healthcare access for BIPOC community members during all phases of the pandemic to identify barriers to equitable healthcare.
- Apply the above lessons to Lamoille County’s shelter and housing efforts.
- Advance coordination to enhance access to healthcare for those in emergency housing.
- Advance collaboration of health service providers and housing partners.
- Conduct a demographic, economic, healthcare, and housing needs analysis of Lamoille County.
- Conduct analysis of healthcare trauma-informed practices at local health and human services partners.
- Assess equitable access to healthcare for rural communities in regards to lack of transportation.
- Assess ability of organizations serving people experiencing homelessness to house onsite medical facilities/medical outreach representatives.
- Out of engagement with the working group and core partners, develop a Homelessness Healthcare Action Plan, including: constraints analysis, recommendations to increase access to social determinants of health, identification of specific projects that can be advanced in ways that provide access to health services and supports, and advancing zoning efforts to reduce homelessness.
Proposal Requirements
Consultants should have an understanding of healthcare systems, service provision systems for those experiencing homelessness, equity practices, trauma-informed care, and systems-level thinking about cross-sector collaboration.
Consultants must submit:
- Resumes and the names and addresses of three references who are familiar with their ability, experience and reliability to do and complete the work tasks.
- A work plan setting out their approach and identification of major tasks and deliverables.
- Estimated hours of consultant time, hourly rate, and a not-to-exceed price.
Evaluation and Selection
All proposals will be evaluated by the healthcare equity grant working group of LVHHC. The successful candidate(s) will have the following experience:
- Experience and knowledge of both the healthcare industry and homelessness service programs.
- Experience and knowledge equity and trauma informed practices and resources.
- Experience evaluating the long-term sustainability of healthcare implementation in nontraditional settings.
- Experience interviewing stakeholders and gathering information.
- Ability to create an action plan based on information gathered.
Proposals will be ranked on the following criteria:
- Demonstration of overall project understanding and knowledge of the healthcare and homelessness services systems
- History of successful projects with similar scopes of work
- Qualifications and related experience of the consultant
- Clarity/quality of the proposal
- Able to start work as soon as possible
- Reasonableness of price
Timeline
- Submission of proposal and related materials by Friday, September 2, 2022 by 4pm.
- Selection of consultant by Friday, September 9, 2022.
- Work on the project begins no later than the end of September, 2022.
We anticipate the work taking between 10-12 months to complete. Consultant will be paid hourly, with expected hours worked for each deliverable outlined in their job description, with flexibility.
Contact Information
Please submit an electronic copy of proposal to the contact person on behalf of the LVHHC, Kim Anetsberger: kanetsberger@lamoilleshelter.org, and Clarissa French, clarissa@uwlamoille.org