Advocacy

To Be Underestimated

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“It’s actually wonderful to be underestimated.”~Jack Canfield.

I’ve been thinking a lot about an interview I had with Outagamie County Shelter Care back in October. The supervisor was a fellow classmate from the same MSW program. I was told that someone with more social service experience was ultimately hired. The biggest thing was that the job I was interviewing for required a less advanced degree. Also, at the time I was doing a job that required more responsibility than what I was potentially going to be required to perform.

Currently I am working on social service policy implementation in a clinical/behavioral health environment. I’m in  charge of enrolling an agency and staff into an unfamiliar billing and rendering service.

This blog was the catalyst for being considered for the current project. Among having previous experience working within the agency. It feels good to be trusted to perform in a leadership role. Leaders don’t need to be constantly supervised to work. It’s refreshing to be able to prove the misconceptions of others wrong.

Chicago’s Urban Warriors Program

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On NPR yesterday, I was listening to a story about gangs, guns, and veterans. Trying to get young gang members to connect with community veterans. Both soldiers with ranks, both having suffered traumatic events. The group was started by a former gang member who serve time for a gang-related murder. His brother a veteran, challenged him with the idea that he had been through traumatic events living on the streets of Chicago.

When I worked at the Boys and Girls Club in the summer, I was working with a lot of kids who lived in Chicago whose families had shipped them up to the area to live with relatives. They were in the area for the summer for their safety, or their family’s peace of mind. Although that realization didn’t even hit me while I was there. It wasn’t until one of my friend’s and co-worker’s brothers was murdered in Milwaukee and was one of the 200 homicides in Milwaukee for 2015.

I was unprepared to be a make role model when I started working with youth but through time and busting stereotypes about teenagers, I found a niche. I found that a lot of other people cannot work with teens. I think overall I can relate to people in transition and teens are in a very tumultuous stage of transitions.

http://www.npr.org/2016/01/25/463875598/chicago-teens-and-combat-veterans-join-forces-in-urban-warriors-program

Behavioral Treatment Modalities

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I’ve been doing research on approved behavioral treatment models for WI Medicaid. I was one of the first kids on Katie Beckett in Wisconsin. When I had to transition from youth services to adult services they told me my birth defects weren’t covered in their system. So I guess I was magically cured and nothing else needed to be done with the craniofacial interventions.

Anyways, it took quite the effort to find WI’s approved treatment modalities. When I searched for MN’s,  it took a whopping ten minutes. And then to see that MN and WI approved some modalities that are different. But the reason that they are approved models are because they have evidence-based research and practice to show that they are effective. So I find it odd that there would be differences between the two states’ approved behavioral treatment models.

I also find it interesting that MN tackled this shift in its health care coverage before WI. It seems like lately, a lot of social program changes in WI are inspired by MN actions.

Garden Creates Veteran Opportunities

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I was provided the opportunity to visit the new enclosed hydroponic garden at Riverview Gardens in Appleton. My younger brother, a Marine combat veteran works there and loves what he does. Being the gardener and photographer, I enjoyed it very much. Especially satisfying was the warm humid environment while outside it was 23° and slightly snowing.

The hydroponic garden will provide veterans with opportunities for job training as well as social interaction. The most important thing is that it provides veterans with some similar work environments or conditions from their days of service.

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Higher Education in Wisconsin

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Before Gov. Scott Walker ran for President, he tried to dramatically cut funding for the UW System. Now, he is traveling the state trying to create a collaborative partnership between the UW System and the Technical Colleges.

I think ineffective and overly saturated professional programs at the UW level should be cut. When I wanted to attend Chicago Theological Seminary, their cohort was single digits. My MSW cohort was over 30 people. However the academic system has so much control over professional licensure, that the two are impossible to separate now.

I was very nearly going to go back to school for Substance Abuse Counseling at the Technical level because my MSW didn’t carry a specialty that could strengthen my employment opportunities. Technical education is very different from University education. I absolutely loved that my classes were multidisciplinary and intersected different types of theory and practice.

There will be an education bubble that bursts just like their was a housing bubble. I wouldn’t believe a presidential candidate promising anything dealing with education or loan forgiveness.

Putting Action into Practice

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One of the 3 topics I researched heavily for my Masters research project was using theatre games to teach social skills to youth with autism.

I bumped into this TEDxColumbia video last night and it brought me back to my graduate school days.  I invested a lot in trying to make that research project work. It was ultimately scrapped because there were issues with getting informed consent from youth with autism and having them fully understand that the project would be voluntary.

When I ran across this video last night which uses Theatre of the Oppressed and Forum Theater, my immediate thought was “I need to ask a high school theater teacher/club to assist me in testing this out and creating a pilot production for issues like bullying, cutting, and suicide prevention.”

Then I thought, how great would this be as a training tool for professionals? Or students in college working to become professionals? To be able to learn that the simplest action can bring about change.

I thought about Cathy Plourde who created a theater group in Maine, AddVerb Productions: Adding the Verb, Adding Action. She used some of my spoken-word poetry in collaboration with other youth in the country to create powerful theatre productions and published anthologies to create change. She invited local service providers to talk about the services they provide to an audience that had taken a step forward from being a spectator to being an agent of change.

I love this idea! It needs to come to fruition! 

Restrictive Measures Part 2

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I’d like to solidify my interest in addressing this topic. I am trying to find out why agencies that address community crisis do not employ the professionals or the training needed to address crisis events in a more broad client population.

My first contact was with DHS about some of my questions regarding community crisis and using police as an intervention tool. I had phone and email contact with Brett Loescher, a policy manager for the state of WI.

What I garnered from that contact was that people needing restrictive measures have a history of aggressive behaviors, so community crisis programs don’t serve them. It was suggested that hospitals and institutions were available for clients with more aggressive histories. But there was an attempt made to point out that de-institutionalization is valued over long term institutional residency. It was an unfamiliar topic when I questioned whether police were being contacted as a crisis tool in community crisis programs. I don’t think I came away with any new insights or answers to my questions.

Through education and research, I know that de-institutionalization began in the 70’s. However I don’t buy in to the suggestion that we are de-emphasizing institutional care as much as people like to talk about it.

It’s becomes a paradox when community crisis agencies don’t use behavioral supports in serving clients. Specifically those whose history may prove problematic for agency-specific services or the skills of unlicenced professionals. Medication is chemical restraint and it is part of the intervention or management of mental illness. But when an agency seeks to hire professionals that only receive internal agency training, how knowledgeable are professionals on the complex effects of medications and keeping updated on the daily mental/physical/environmental changes of clients?

Currently I am following the Post Crescent on their series about addressing children’s mental health. They covered a story about police departments not having crisis intervention training. So that presents another question; when you know that you don’t have the authority or training to handle a situation and you call the police, what are you really expecting?

My next contact will be with police departments.

Sustainability of Non Profits?

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The Fox Valley has easily over 500 non-profit agencies. Many of them are smaller and run by individuals who saw a need not met in the community. Rarely do smaller non-profits collaborate or join together to become one larger agency. The biggest issues that smaller agencies deal with are funding resources and building a client population to implement the goals of the agency’s initial creation. Many people create a non-profit organization because of some event in their life or they saw a need and wanted it addressed in the community.

When I worked for the Boys and Girls Club Fox Valley, most of their programs were and still are funded by community grants, program-specific funds, and state/national grants. The Boys and Girls Club Fox Valley was created in 1998 out of a deadly gang fight that rocked the community back in 1995.
(http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1995-07-06/news/9507060158_1_gang-nicknames-joker-members)

That event sparked a conversation about safe places for teenagers to socialize and spend their free time. When I worked with youth on gang prevention, I did a lot of research through the Office of Justice Programs(OJP) and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). Most negative behaviors in teenagers occur in the after-school hours. So there is correlated evidence that after school programs help prevent juvenile justice related behaviors. Although, during school behaviors are very much a part of a juvenile justice social worker’s job.

The Fox Valley Community Foundation (cffoxvalley.org) is one place to begin obtaining grants for an agency or a particular initiative that brings value into the community.  It also offers beneficial information on financial sustainability of an agency or service. According to their website, 986 non-profits including schools and hospitals received funds from various community grants and personal donor funding sources in the 2014-2015 fiscal year.

Martin Luther King Day and Volunteerism

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Today I want to focus on MLK Day and volunteering. Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day and I’ve already received plenty of emails about volunteering in the community on that day.

I’ll probably spend my day volunteering at Riverview Gardens. Being a gardener, the winter is hard to get through and they have a beautiful indoor hydroponic garden. But what I really want people to know is that becoming a regular volunteer in your community is very beneficial to you and others. Sure you could use volunteering as a networking ploy. However I have found that my volunteer work with men on supervision has really opened my eyes on the needs of the community, especially a population that seems to be forgotten.

I am much more knowledgeable about community resources, in fact I was provided a giant binder full of resources and contacts when I first started volunteering. Now I go out and research or interview service providers to be able to find out more and share that information.

You then get a sense of where your advocacy or social service work can have the most effect. You have to realize that the majority group is always going to ask you to wait, wait for a better time to act in the way you need to seek your rights or the rights of others. You don’t wait, you act and understand that you don’t need to worry about other people’s comfort zones. Progress is not made by conforming. Civil disobedience is not about civil convenience. You can quote me on that! So go out and get engaged with your community every day not just a national holiday.

Advocacy for Aging Adults

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This article in the Guardian struck my interest today. When you identify yourself as a social worker, people generally automatically assume you work with children.  Also, I see a lot of continuing education training targeted towards child issues and not so much for adults.

The baby boomer generation is aging and what I see are social service agencies looking for Direct Support Professionals over social workers or clinicians who have no certifications or specialized training requirements. A lot of elderly care services are taken up by private agencies. The real heartache is that service towards the elderly is not more of a platform for social workers and social advocates.

I get uneasy when I walk into a retirement community that is below ground and covered in artificial light. I get uneasy when an agency decides to put their hospice in the basement of their sprawling facility. People are unaware that retirement facilities are the new community-based institutions. I am glad though that more and more people are allowed to get care in their private homes, especially when it comes to hospice. Hospice definitely comes with challenges but to deliver services to people in a very stressful time, must be very rewarding.

I hope that more social workers will move towards aging client populations. I suspect when they have experienced the aging process of their families, they will have a better understanding of what is needed out in the community. As someone who has a lot of elderly neighbors, I keep an eye out. Some of them are stuck as shut-ins because of their mobility and their children come by every day or two to assist them and keep them social in the community.

http://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/social-life-blog/2016/jan/13/social-work-with-older-people-is-as-important-as-child-protection?CMP=share_btn_link

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