Local families and migrants who have maxed out their time in overflow shelters and exhausted all other options will be directed by state officials to find a “safe alternative for housing” before being kicked out, according to a state informational document that was circulated Wednesday.

The circulation of the document came one day before updated shelter rules in Massachusetts were set to take effect that limit stays in overflow sites to five business days and require families to wait six months before accessing the larger emergency shelter system.

Shelter providers will connect newly arrived migrants and local families to “case management services” at overflow sites that focus on tapping into an “existing support network” that may be able to help out even if that “network” is not in the state, according to the document.

“If a connection is made to a friend or family member outside of Massachusetts, the family will be provided with tickets to that friend or family member,” the document said. “If, after their stay at the (overflow shelter), a family has not identified resources within their social network, families will be directed to identify a safe alternative for housing and will be provided transportation to that location.”

State officials will start kicking families out of overflow shelters under the new five-day limit starting next week, according to Gov. Maura Healey’s office, which said it had been developing the policies outlined in the informational document over the past few weeks.

Healey earlier this month rebranded overflow shelters serving families with children and pregnant women who are looking to gain access to the larger emergency shelter system as “temporary respite centers.”

The move came amid a continued influx of migrants and strain on the emergency shelter system, which state officials expect will cost the state over $1 billion a year for the next several fiscal years.

The decision to cap lengths of stay at overflow sites and impose a waiting period for emergency shelter access set off alarm bells among advocates who questioned what families would do once they ran out of time at overflow sites.

But the informational document, which says it was last updated Wednesday, said providers running overflow shelters “can grant administrative extensions at any point in a family’s stay” for between five and 30 business days.

“Administrative extensions may be granted for needs, including but not limited to, rehousing plans, delays in transportation, and health-related events,” the document said.

Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless Associate Director Kelly Turley said she was “grateful” to see that overflow shelter providers were given the ability to grant extensions.

“But those extensions won’t be significant enough to be able to help families transition to secure locations in most cases,” she told the Herald at the State House Wednesday afternoon.

The administrative extensions, according to Healey’s office, are intended for families who are on the verge of finding a place to stay but need more time.

That could include a family that has lined up a rental unit but the move-in date is a week away or a family who plans to travel to another state but the flights are on a different day, Healey’s office said.

In her announcement earlier this month, Healey added new criteria for prioritizing families’ placement into longer-term emergency shelters, including boosting those who are homeless because of a no-fault eviction and have at least one family member who is a veteran.

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The informational document also says families will be prioritized if they are exiting a Department of Children and Families “Young Parent Living Program” due to age limits.

“Families will also continue to be prioritized if they have specific medical needs, are at risk of domestic violence, or are homeless because of fire, flood, or other disasters. If there are no shelter units immediately available, prioritized families will be eligible to temporarily stay at one of the clinical safety risk assessment sites,” the document said.

The document also said the state’s housing department has added nearly 4,000 temporary hotel and permanent sites to the emergency shelter system, underscoring the drastic expansion the Healey administration has undertaken in the face of arriving migrants.

Officials wrote in the document that the shelter system has had to expand each month since September 2022 in order to meet increased needs as a result of rising housing costs in every region and new arrivals to Massachusetts.

“Additionally, with an increasingly tight housing market and significant delay in federal work authorizations, more families are experiencing homelessness and fewer are exiting shelter into their own stable, permanent housing,” the document said.