Caban Q&A: connection rates, retention efforts, and outreach

When you're doing those check-ins, what's the connection rate like?

And I also just want to acknowledge that obviously you're checking in on somebody who presumably was connected to an outside, and they have their own protocols for when somebody doesn't show up.

And then, again, I have a former colleague here that's going to testify, but putting my public defender hat on, some of the most simplest things.

It's like, oh, why can't your client come back to court and complete the program?

Because they don't have a MetroCard.

Because they didn't feel like they could show up in clean clothes today.

Or just other things that are destabilizing their life that are, you know, are...

That they can't keep up with.

Yes.

So the connection rate is, I'd say about 50-50.

Once we connect them to the outside.

That's actually really good.

As somebody who knocks doors or makes phone calls, that's a pretty high connection rate.

In the interviews, the further out it is, the connection rate gets a little bit harder.

Because, of course, simple things like people changing phone numbers and not updating us with the information causes the reason why we can't connect at the later interviews.

But within the first same year we have a strong connection with them.

And what are your retention effort?

Besides the check-in, is there anything else that you guys do to sort of encourage, promote retention in programs and services?

What are the things that you're doing to reduce stigma?

And then to kind of round out this line of questions, are there identifiable services that...

That we should be providing that?

Like, what are the gaps that you're seeing in terms of veteran retention and programming?

I think we have, thank you for that question.

And I think we have learned a lot from the Dwyer programming.

So for the Dwyer programming that had run, we did a participant survey after each of the programs.

And a lot of the overwhelming feedback was that 90% were recommended to another veteran.

79% felt that they were encouraged.

to seek other mental health support, as Dwyer is suicide prevention funding, but done in a way to facilitate peer-to-peer support and reduce social isolation.

But they are reporting that since they were with that community, with each other, then they felt more empowered to get services.

Something that we've seen in the veteran community is that a lot is spread by word of mouth.

That is something that still remains to be the greatest way to share information within the community.

So for us as an agency, what we've been focusing on is sharing that information in a multitude of ways.

So that includes creating our Veterans Resource Guide.

To be in a Spanish version as well.

That includes growing our social media from 3,000 followers to over 6,000 followers to ensure we're sharing information, as well as our weekly newsletter.

So that is something that we've seen the subscriber rate increase since prior to the commissioner's tenure here, it has now increased.

So for us, it's making sure that the information we're sharing is not in just one mechanism or one way.