FORT FRANCES — In any effort to help, it helps to know who needs help.
That principle is at the heart of the local By-Name List kept in the Rainy River district and all other districts across Ontario since 2021.
Mandated by the provincial Homelessness Prevention Program, By-Name Lists are databases of who is experiencing homelessness. They help district social services boards and the agencies they work with to connect the unhoused with services and supports.
There are “person-centred” and “system-centred” purposes for the By-Name List, said Brenda Witherspoon-Bedard, the District of Rainy River Services Board’s community engagement coordinator for homelessness.
On the person level, she said, “we know who has the higher needs and we can work with that person to do whatever needs to be done to get housing.”
An unhoused individual may work with one particular agency, such as the local Friendship Centre, but with a database that every agency and the services board can access “it’s like they become everybody’s client, not just one agency’s client,” she said.
On a system level, she explained, the By-Name List gives the services board a “big picture” idea of how many people in the district are experiencing homelessness and whether progress is being made.
“We’ve got all this data that can say here’s what our district looks like at any time, and that’s important because homelessness is very fluid.”
The By-Name List gives the board and its community partners a better idea of the situation on the ground than they would get by periodically enumerating the unhoused, she said.
The information is collected mainly by community partners — agencies that deliver assistance to people experiencing homelessness.
The DRRSB trains agency workers on how to add people to the list, Witherspoon-Bedard said. “And as they provide services, they might say, ‘Hey, we have a By-Name list. Can we put your name on it?’ and then go from there.”
Besides the person’s name, a list entry includes age, contact details, Indigenous identity, gender identity, length of time homeless, special needs and where they’ve been staying recently.
The Rainy River board keeps the information on an Excel spreadsheet that keeps a running tally of how many people are on the list and other data, Witherspoon-Bedard said.
Though names are kept by the services board, they’re not visible to just anybody utilizing the list. Instead, a number is assigned to each name. Names are inputted at the outset “to make sure we don’t duplicate,” Witherspoon-Bedard explained.
“So normally then when other people outside see (the information), they see a number for confidentiality.”
The list is updated at meetings of the services board and community-partner agencies on the last Wednesday of every month, she said.
“We all get together and we review, ‘Have you seen this person in community? How’s it going with the housing?’
“We talk about each person by name, which is perfect for a By-Name List. Then I will update the list with whatever information was shared at the meeting, and then that would fold over to the next month.”
And the list goes on.
