El Paso Coalition for the Homeless

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El Paso Coalition for the Homeless

• CIS 3340
• Dr. Kesh
• Brisa Bolaños

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El Paso Coalition for the Homeless

• In this presentation I am going to examine the
  impact of information technology in the
  department of Clients Services.
• First is necessary to introduce what is the
  purpose of EPC   The El Paso Coalition for the
  Homeless exists for the purpose of helping
  homeless persons move toward self-sufficiency and
  helping prevent homelessness among persons at
  risk. It seeks to accomplish these goals through
  coordination of social services,cooperation among
  non-profit and governmental agencies,
  collaboration in securing and distributing funds
  for homeless programs, and advocacy on behalf of
  the homeless. A main objective of the Coalition
  is the identification of gaps in the continuum of
  care for the homeless and the development of
  programs to fill those gaps.

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El Paso Coalition for the Homeless

• CLIENTS SERVICES
• The main purpose of this organization is to help
  homeless people therefore is necessary to have
  the best database in order to keep track of all
  the homeless clients.
• This organization offers to its clients the
  department housing, food and clothing, education,
  and employment. Each department has to keep track
  of all the clients it helps in order to get more
  funds.

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El Paso Coalition for the Homeless

• Clients Services in the Past
• At the beginning of this organization all the
  information was in forms. This forms were later
  recorded in a computer.
• For instance the intake form (a form that verify
  whether the person is homeless) was recorded in a
  computer in Word Perfect. So it was very
  difficult to look information because it was not
  in alphabetical order. The data was recorded by
  date.

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El Paso Coalition for the Homeless

• Intake form

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El Paso Coalition for the Homeless

• Clients Services at the Present
• At the present is being used an Access database.
• It contains all the information of the intake
  form for each homeless client.
• It is very easy to find any record. Any staff
  member can look for a record in alphabetical
  order, or by date, by number of years being a
  client, etc.
• This database is in a network all computers from
  all the departments are able to access this
  database.
• The only disadvantage is that the person at the
  help desk gives the intake form to the computer
  administrator. Later the computer administrator
  records all the information. This is a lot of
  time consuming.

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El Paso Coalition for the Homeless

• Clients Services in the Future
• The person at the front desk will be in charge of
  entering all the information at the time the
  homeless client gets for the first in the center.
• This organization will use SQL database since
  this kind of database is better than Access.

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El Paso Coalition for the Homeless

• Clients Services in the Past
• Each department has to fill out every day what
  kind of service gives to the homeless client.
• In the past the dailies form was just filled out
  manually and recorded in a folder.
• When it was needed a person will have to look for
  it in the folder.
• It was a lot of time consuming.

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El Paso Coalition for the Homeless

• Dailies form

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El Paso Coalition for the Homeless

• Clients Services at the Present
• The dailies form is in an Access database.
• However each department has its own dailies
  database.
• Some department first do the dailies form
  manually and then in the database. A lot of time
  consuming.

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El Paso Coalition for the Homeless

• Dailies Form

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El Paso Coalition for the Homeless

• Clients Services in the Future
• All the dailies forms from all the departments
  are going to be in a database connected through a
  network.
• In this way any staff employee will be able to
  see from which departments the homeless client is
  getting help.
• Staff from each department are going to be
  trained in order to be encouraged to use only the
  dailies form from the database in order to spend
  less paper and time.

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El Paso Coalition for the Homeless

• Conclusion
• This organization has improved a lot with the use
  of the computer software and the networking
  system that it has.
• It not only saves money but also time.