Triage at WLP: Helping as Many Women as Possible
These are foundational statements expressing the intentionality of creating access to WLP’s services for vulnerable, traumatized women. But what happens when this intake process is not fully aligned with its intent? Passively “meeting women where they are” may miss women with addressable needs who do not or cannot express them.
Imagine that you’ve lost your identification card, and you’re homeless. Until you get a new ID, you cannot apply for housing, gain employment, open a bank account, or sign up for food stamps and social security benefits, among other vital tasks. The question “What to do next?” is extremely daunting, especially if your basic needs of food, warmth, shelter, and hygiene are not met. Obtaining an ID is just one among a litany of common barriers that our guests face. Barriers can lead to lengthy delays, threats to health and safety, frustration, alienation, and a loss of hope.
Most people are familiar with the practice of triage in a medical setting – conducting a preliminary assessment of patients to determine the urgency of need for treatment and particular treatment required. Essentially, it establishes priorities for care. In business, triage is a decision-making framework used to maximize outcomes with available resources.
At WLP, we first introduced the concept of triage as part of our work to refine an integrated, relational service model that provided outreach to our most vulnerable guests who were not accessing services. Triage was to be used to eliminate these barriers, educate guests, and streamline the pathway from Direct Care (short-term needs) to Advocacy (long-term needs). The program looked to meet disenfranchised guests and provide immediate support to encourage hopefulness by experiencing small, early successes.
With the onset of the pandemic and the resulting changes in our service model, triage on the street became a critical mechanism to manage service delivery– effectively replacing all previous forms of outreach. As demand for WLP’s help grew, triage was a key tool in matching guests to Direct Care and Advocacy staff with relevant specialized knowledge.
Requests for Advocacy services, particularly housing search and stabilization, have increased dramatically this past year. The need for a rapid, prioritized workflow to identify critical issues and stratify others became essential to manage caseload capacity. Our team implemented a central triage desk in the community dining room, overseen by a Care Navigator, to ensure Advocacy services were more accessible and basic care needs were quickly met. Care coordination aligns Advocacy, Direct Care, and Volunteer services and procedures to address the most urgent issues first. Once urgent issues are identified, other workflows are employed to address more routine needs.
Outreach in the community setting continues to identify guests in need and ensure connection to Advocacy services. Many guests will seek our services and approach a Direct Care staff member or visit the triage desk. They will be asked a few basic questions (e.g., “What can we help you with?” “Have you already been matched with an Advocate?”). Our process is designed to learn about and address the guest’s needs as quickly and efficiently as possible.
For example, if a guest has a lower barrier need such as help getting an MBTA card, they can be assisted right away by the Care Navigator at the triage desk. There are two clear benefits––the guest skips the wait for an Advocacy meeting and is helped immediately, which builds trust and optimism for future problem solving, and the WLP Advocate keeps a valuable opening on their schedule.
If a guest’s issue is more complex, the WLP team member may usher the guest into a nearby room with two on-call Advocates. Many times, our staff will facilitate a face- to-face introduction between a guest and her new Advocate. This thoughtful, personal connection generates trust with the possibility of furthering a guest’s momentum.
More extensive work continues in individual meetings with Advocates, who are skilled at navigating the bureaucracies that obscure critical benefits and solutions for our guests. To find available housing, for example, requires comprehensive identification, income verification, housing histories, housing search, complicated applications, background searches, interviews, and negotiations with property owners, all of which can be overwhelming for anyone, particularly for our most vulnerable guests. Advocates skillfully weave through these roadblocks, both with and on behalf of their clients, pushing the process forward and cementing a sense of hope and possibility in doing so.
Through it all, our approach is relational, not transactional. In a world full of relentlessly complicated obstacles to their safety and stability, our guests can find a clear, hopeful path forward at Women’s Lunch Place.