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Ali Ryder
Although obviously people shouldn’t be collecting information for non-consenting clients, there is a big sticking point and that’s shelter use. Shelters need to report on bed nights and occupancy, and if they give a bed to a client who didn’t consent to information collection, they’re put in a difficult position. What to do? The options are:
  • Book in the client Anonymous, Anonymous. But this client is still bound by the concurrent stays rules, so cannot be in two beds at the same time. If there are two non-consenting clients occupying any two shelter beds at the same time, this is a problem.
  • Don’t record it in HIFIS at all. But then the HIFIS data is unreliable, and you can’t run a year-end report, or do a data export to INFC, that is actually true. And people might think the bed is available because HIFIS says so, so make inappropriate referrals.
  • Create a series of fake clients, like Anon 1 and Anon 2, so they can be booked in concurrently. This is the option a lot of communities take, but it then causes a proliferation of clients named “Anonymous” or “Anon,” which makes the database messy and actually discourages users from getting real consent.
Since this is really only a big problem in Admissions (concurrent book-ins), I propose a solution like in Turnaways: Add Anonymous Book-In. Same as the way Turnaways handle anonymous clients, but for the Admissions module.