Social Work, Sports & Teamwork

I love Social Work. Its essence is about connecting, about reaching out, about recognizing human need as something other than failure, lack of character or being "bad". Social Work, at its best, acknowledges that all human beings are fallible, but also that all human beings have aspirations to be better, whatever form those aspirations may take, however difficult they may be to discern at all. Social Work is about taking judgement out of the equation of whether or not one deserves to have a good life.

But, one of the glaring misses that often manifests in the practice of Social Work is that the principles applied in the service of clients are too often withheld in the management of those delivering service. This is in part because social workers often identify so much as givers, that they struggle with the notion of receiving support, as though life were a zero-sum game, in which receiving would somehow invalidate, or somehow dilute, the quality of their giving. This, of course, is nonsense.

But unfortunately, the business stylings with which Social Work management increasingly constrains itself - in the name of professionalism, efficiency and accountability - can cause it to overlook the sector-specific needs of its work force, succumbing to an accounting method of evaluating the work.

What generated this post are thoughts about Teamwork; about how Teamwork can improve the delivery of social services, but how so many agencies and institutions fail to embrace two of the most useful methodologies inherent in Teamwork, those being: the division of labor and the matching of abilities and interests to the tasks at hand.

This is where Sport comes into the discussion. Professional sports management is substantially about maximizing the effectiveness of talent. Coaching focuses on the development and matching of skills. Social Work management, on the other hand, is often about normalizing and standardizing a work force, partly so as to have a uniform and predictable delivery of services. There are lots of reasons for this, not least of which are the influence of unions and the need to avoid liability. So, while Sports Managers and coaches seek out and build on the unique qualities of athletes, and match them for optimal effectiveness, Social Services managers are more likely to seek to eliminate differences in work styles, and to create predictable norms for its service delivery. Coaches tend to view unique qualities as gifts, to be developed. In competition, these are advantages that catch opponents off guard and disrupt their plans. In social work, unique qualities can undermine consistency in service delivery, and can create expectations that cannot be met.

These differences between the two management approaches are appropriate to the fields to which they apply. And yet ... possibilities are sometimes missed.

In my social work career, I've experienced plenty of very appropriate specialization on the level of job description and duties. For example, a group home I worked in employed several frontline workers to manage the day-to-day activities of residents. In addition, there were managers, an intake coordinator, a case-manager, a life-skills teacher, and a counselor. This level of specialization and division of labor is common in the field. But there was another level of specialization that took place among the frontline workers. One of the staff was into physical fitness, so developed outings and activities that built on this passion. Another person was into cooking and nutrition. A third loved music and movies and organized entertainments. Yet another was passionate about education, books and learning, and was able to form special bonds with residents open to his influence. But the only way this could happen was with the encouragement and support of managers who were willing to allow flexibility in the sharing of duties. The sharing of duties related to the different temperments and interests of the staff spilled over into such things as handling the conflicts that erupted on a daily basis, writing log entries, dealing with parents and teachers and case-workers who phoned and visited the facility, assigning and monitoring chores. Certainly, these were areas of shared responsibility, but in most instances, individuals with particular abilities took disproportionate rolls in areas of their strength and/or interest.

In larger institutions, this type of personalized job functioning is much harder to find. Job descriptions are more standardized, and often, everyone is expected to do everything. What is often lost is the benefit of freeing up the incredible diversity of human personality, skill and passion.

The reason Sports comes to mind is that its focus on Team Achievement generates a perspective from which the development of individual talent is freed from standardization. There's not quite so much need for the human parts to be interchangeable. Role Players who specialize are appreciated for their expertise, and are not relied on for what they cannot do, don't do well, or don't do at all. (Of course, they are compensated accordingly, which, if they lack the required skills, could mean no compensation at all).

I find myself wishing that there was more, explicit currying of talent in social work, or, at least, more acknowledgment that workers are unique and that their development and contribution needn't fit a mold. I'm overstating my case, but to make a point that I think is useful. Human Services work depends on the face-to-face expression of humanity. It depends on staff who bring their full, multi-dimensional selves to work every day, sharing their passion and the richness of their experience. It is the human quality, moreso than the professional, that gives Social Work its heart and vigor. The technical skill and knowledge base that derive from professionalism are able to flourish because of the human connection that the best workers are able to make. And sometimes - only sometimes, mind you - the idiosyncratic is discouraged or squeezed out, where it might be of tremendous value.

Think of your favorite teacher. Chances are - if I'm right - that special teacher in your life was quite different than others, had some unique gifts, was maybe even weird. Most of my favorite teachers were. And I understand that this is precisely where the great risk comes in. One of my best teachers ever was probably a bit psychotic. He sometimes went on rants about conspiracies being hatched against him, and he was a bit too hands on with some of the girls. He was fired, eventually, and should have been. At the same time, he had a talent for teaching that I'll never forget. I'm not suggesting for a moment that such an individual belonged in teaching, or in social work. But I do believe that efforts to prevent such dangers can go too far. And when uniqueness and idiosyncrasies, and personal passions, and imbalances in skill, and expressions of affection are weeded out, it has gone too far.

As the French say, "Vive la Difference!"

 

Coming Around

                I got something today that every social worker needs: confirmation from a client that the work has generated some good – with evidence to back it up.

                It’s been a dull and down time here in street outreach. Not only is my personal energy low, and I’m lacking enthusiasm and even doubting my role. It’s also that my clients are going off the rails. It’s very distressing when one you take into your charge deteriorates, goes deeper into dysfunction, despite your efforts. Really makes you question if you’re doing what you ought to be doing.

                I know I have something to offer these young charges of mine. Only, I no longer believe it’s enough. I never have – in the sense that, I don’t know if anyone’s life is saved in being managed by another. It’s the learning and incorporation of self-management skills that ultimately seems to make the difference. But, a committed partner can be invaluable in mustering the energy, focus and persistence needed to develop these skills. And these days, sadly, I’m short of energy, on focus, and on persistence, even with regards to my personal issues. So how to shore up the reserves of spirit in another?

                The confirmation call I received today was from a young man I began working with about two and a half years ago. At that time, he was on the streets, drinking and smoking lots of pot (but doing no other drugs), panhandling, and being extremely bitter about every negative circumstance that came his way. He – I’ll call him Daniel – had the sort of entrenched mind set that peeled back the veneer of every good thing to focus on the encroaching rot that lie beneath.

                I won’t go into detail about Daniel’s ups and downs over the following months and years. But through a series of them, he somehow managed to recognize that much of what took place in his orbit was influenced by the decisions he made. He stopped seeing himself as the victim of malignant fate and began to make better choices, and to take responsibility for the poor ones he continued to make from time to time. He gradually got to the point of no longer needing the support of programs like mine. He found himself a compatible partner, moved into better housing, away from the downtown core, began to work.

                A few months ago, he contacted me to lend support. He was trying to get custody of children he’d never provided for, whom he’d hardly seen, but now felt ready to have in his life. He wanted a letter of support for the courts. This represented such a substantial change for Daniel. He’d grown out of his near total dependence and dysfunction, and then beyond mere survival. And he was now looking beyond his immediate needs, and wanting to provide something better for others he was ready to claim his rightful responsibility for.

               
                 The call from Daniel today was to announce he’d just come from court. He’s been granted shared custody of his children. He passed his last assessment by Children’s Aide, and will be able to have his kids in his home, without the supervision that had previously been required, every other weekend, every other Christmas. He was so happy and proud.

                And he said that he wanted me to know that the work I had done with him had made a difference. He said that he knows how much frustration there can be in my work – he’d caused enough of it himself. And now, he wanted to share his joy, his accomplishment, his success.

                What a gift. And for that, the job will weigh a little lighter tomorrow.

Who, What and Why

      I received a phone call from a landlord the other day. I was surprised to hear from him because the last clients of mine that he'd rented to had become a nightmare for him. They were a group of friends who'd seemed to operate well as a unit. But when the young woman left, the two guys proved incapable of maintaining any standards. They'd invited friends and acquaintences to camp out on their floors, and the place had been trashed. They let food containers, empty cans and bottles and dog feces accumulate on the balcony, and they got into arguments with other tenants, some of whom had threatened to move out. One of the visitors had bombarded a middle-aged woman with obscenities when she refused to admit her to the building. It turned out that the woman was a relative of the building's owner. And random street kids had begun to stop by at all hours and even to scale the balcony when there was no quick response to their shouts for admission.

    So while this landlord had previously housed two other pairs of my clients, who'd done well and had never drawn negative attention to themselves, the last situation had soured things, and it went without saying that he wasn't likely to take in clients of mine again. Though the relationship had ended respectfully, and with sincere good wishes and empathy of both sides, I hadn't expected to ever hear from him.

    Except that now, several months later, a problem had arisen relating to one of those other rentals, that had seemingly gone so well. My clients had left the building some months before. The couple had broken up, after one of them suddenly spiraled into mental illness and returned to the streets. The remaining individual, had quickly fallen behind with the rent, and in order to make up the shortfall, invited a cousin to stay with her, with the landlord's reluctant consent. When my client found the situation unworkable, she too left, leaving the apartment in the hands of the cousin. He too fell behind in the rent, but took no successful action to do anything about it, eventually abandonning the apartment and all its furnishings, which the original young couple had received free from a local furniture bank.

     The reason for the landlord's call wasn't any of this. He didn't hold me accountable for the actions of the cousin, nor for his arrears. And though he'd lost some income on non-payment of rent, and would pay out more to have the belongings cleared and the apartment returned to rentable condition, this scenario wasn't too far off the routine run of things in the low-end rental market. The reason for his call was something a bit less usual.

     The tenants, when abandonning the apartment, had left four cats behind. When the property manager entered the premises, after posting notice, he found two malnourished adult cats and two kittens. It was a wonder the animals weren't dead. They were found during a period of stifling heat, and what water and food might have been left out for them was clearly long gone. The landlord was calling for my help.

     Technically, the cats were now the landlord's responsibiliy. According to the Landlord Tenant Act, the animals were to be treated like any other property. If the landlord wanted to 'dispose' of 'the property', he had to post notice, then 'maintain the property' for 30 days. Not surprisingly, this landlord wasn't willing to do that. Even if he did keep the pets for the month, there would still be fees he'd have to pay to turn them over to Animal Control or the Humane Society. The landlord confided to me that, if he couldn't come up with any better solution, he'd simply have the cats put out to the street, to fend for themselves.

     And so, I took the matter on. To make a long story short, I was able to reach an agreement with the landlord, and with a helpful supervisor at Animal Control, that 'for the well-being of the animals' I would pick them up from the apartment and deliver them to animal control as 'strays'. This was done, and the personnel at Animal Control took them in without question, though with an eyebrow raised at the notion that I'd 'happened upon' four stray cats. But they, like I, recognized that, in finding a way around the technicalities of the law, we were saving four cats from certain misery or death, and giving them a shot at adoption.

     What sticks with me about this episode is trying to imagine the frame of mind that led someone to abandon the apartment with four live cats locked inside. And, it led initially to some thoughts about my own clients, supposing them somehow culpable, though, so far as I know, they had nothing at all to do with this.

     But this situation made me angry. I wanted to assign blame. I found myself judging, and I determined that anyone capable of such callous indifference to innocent life was undeserving of support in their own struggle toward fulfillment. I wanted the suffering of those cats to be a lesson - a lesson underscored by a like suffering - to those I judged indifferent to any suffering but their own.

     But I cannot go forward from that place. It's too narrow, too locked in, by the rigidity of judging, by the harshness of a zero-sum mentality, by the brittleness of my own certainty as to the state of the mind and soul of another. How to judge? How to assign blame? How to assess sin? And, if there is some kind of blindness operating here, is it a condition of the eyes alone, or a disease of the soul?

     Is this a convoluted, intellectual path to negotiate over a few abandonned cats?... Maybe. And maybe it's not far enough. I haven't come out where I imagined when  I began writing this piece. It was originally intended to suggest an uncomplicated moral lesson. But now that seems more difficult to arrive at. And not quite honest. I have only to remember my own obsessions, my own locked-in preoccupation with complaints, mistreatment, with real and imagined pains, to also remember how such things can swallow up the very sun. I can imagine (because I can remember) that the person who left those cats did so convinced that it was the most generous, humane and hopeful act possible. The intention to give moral instruction seems pretty arrogant, and beyond the point. Anyone can be judged guilty. But does that in itself change anything?

Beer & Buddhism

Spiritual practice? What does that even mean?

I’ve grown tired of spiritual pursuits. Bored with religious proselytizing. I no longer welcome the Mormon or Jehovah’s Witness that comes to the door. And I don’t engage the Black Muslim who calls me brother with a wave of his newsletter. I’ve about had it with true believers. I’m not even much interested any more in finding something upon which to hang the label “Truth”.

And yet....The spirit is hungry for something. Some thing that sorts sense from nonsense, that gives a direction to all this otherwise directionless living. Some thing to give meaning to passion and prayers.

Tonight, over beer in a Bloor Street pub, we spoke to this. People, sharing what we do, explaining our hungers and dreams, our indulgences and bad habits. It was an evening of personal time with allies from my working world, people who share with me the burdensome tragedy-comedy of lives gone askew. We laughed while we consumed chicken wings and gossiped about our three affiliated places of work. But mostly we spoke of other things: the music we love, social work jobs in Nunavit, club-hopping and the passion of dance, eating or not eating meat, growing corn and making wine, why people come out to a pub to watch Glee, the inequities in sick time benefits.

I was glum and worn down when the evening began. My colleagues cheered me with complaints of their own. “It’s all about the BMW,” I was told – bitching, moaning, whining. Like listening to the blues, it raised me up. Something about shared sorrows. Not so nice when your woman leaves you maybe, but a different thing to understand that leaving and getting left is in the nature of things. It connects you somehow, pulls you down into the deep whorl of being, doing, enduring; this tragic-comic life, the inevitability of things going wrong.

Beer, of course, is an ages old spiritual practice. No doubt lots older than Buddhism, or any other formal creed with its precepts, rituals or deities. Tonight, it feels like it’s all part of a whole. What my beer teaches me tonight is to be present to the chicken wings. The crack addict waiting for his rented room will be there tomorrow. There’s nothing to do for him tonight. And the kid who had the mental collapse and who needs to find the vet for his puppy, he will show up tomorrow or he will not. And the eviction notice that’s on the way for the guys letting all their street friends crash with them...well, it won’t come any faster or slower because of my worrying.

It’s a beautiful night. The rain isn’t rain, but drops of cool moisture falling from the sky. It isn’t the eve of December, but the graceful arc of the planet as it bends its way around the sun. Whatever is hurting in my life has no intention of punishing me. But darkness follows when the sun goes down, my strength wanes with every passing year, and the edge of the knife is sharp.

The Hard Slog

It's been a tough couple of weeks in the world of Housing and Street Outreach. Clients are facing eviction, dealing with courts and probation, lots of missed appointments and abandonned opportunities.

Earlier in my career I'd have said I was headed for burnout. It used to almost creep up on me without my knowing it. One reason for this is that burnout can come about in a number of ways. It can be the result of taking on the emotional burden of our clients' challenges. Or, it can come from too long a period in overdrive - simply trying to do too much. Another route is to let the formal boundaries between work life and home life collapse, and suddenly find yourself getting calls at home and handling client issues during family time. And it can result from believing that you are the one sure and necessary partner who will make or break your client's success.

I'm better about all these things than I once was. The first time I experienced burnout, it showed up in the imbalanced way I began doing my work - putting a zealot's energy into the transformative features of the program, like goal-setting and personal vision work, but ignoring the basic and practical management elements, like whether clients were completing chores and observing 'lights out'. It was a typical beginner's pitfall: believing - or wanting to believe - that all my charges needed was to be inspired and set free of constraints. My boss at the time sent me home for some manditory vacation time. It took a few days and a little distance from the transitional group home for me to see that he was right.

These days, I'm  better at managing my pace, which translates into recognizing the pace my clients are on, and the place they are in, and accepting that these are not easily changed. And still, it's sometimes hard to maintain the faith - to me, essential in this work - that growth is happening every day, whether I see it or not.

I'm glad the weekend is here. I WILL separate from the job for a couple of days, and attend to more personal needs. And hopefully, when I pick it up again on Monday, I'll be a bit refreshed. Faith is easier on a good night's sleep.

Nothing to Show

Today I learned of the death of the first of my clients I ever housed through the Streets to Homes program. He was in his mid-twenties and died of an overdose. Adrian (I’ve changed all names here, for the usual reasons) was a kid engaged in an intense battle with his addictions. It was an all-consuming battle, but I can’t truly describe it as a battle ‘against’ his addictions. At times, it was clearly his sobriety that was the enemy. At other times, it seemed it was he himself he was determined to undo. Though the battle seemed to be on-going, and the focus of most of his waking moments, the battle lines were never very clearly drawn. I imagine that his was a battle like many that occur in wars, once romance and patriotism and the veneer of order are peeled away – a confusing horror of weapons wielded in anger but without aim, of blind violence against whatever person or object is near, of rape and vengeance seized upon with an unreigned appetite whenever the opportunity presents itself.

When Adrian was on the street, before he was housed and making some tentative steps toward recovery, while he was still sleeping in parking garages and on top of grates in the downtown core, he was the youngest in a crowd of homeless men who were all locked in debilitating struggles with alcohol and drugs and who formed a loose yet cohesive community. There was Ted, a man in his mid-forties who had himself once been a social worker. Ted also had a claim as the “youngest” of the crowd, in the sense that he had the least direct experience of the streets, having only become homeless a few months before. He was the centre of the group, the one around whom the others congregated, partly because of his age, because of his education, and possibly because his having once been a worker himself testified to the arbitrariness of the catastrophe that had put each of them on the street. But it also had a lot to do with his calm and easy spirit, and his way of pulling the guys into moving the same way, instead of against each another. There was Bernie, in his thirties, who proudly and ardently refused all help from workers, but who loved to welcome and talk with us all the same. There was Donnie, living half the time with the grate crowd and the rest of his time with a mentally and emotionally fragile girlfriend he shared a tumultuous and sometimes violent relationship with. In all, there were about ten regulars and hangers-on, about half of them Caucasian and the other half Native, sharing their booze and sleeping space on the grate, caring for one or two dogs, supporting one another through their arrests, visits to emergency rooms and stays in detox when the lifestyle became too intense to bear.

At any given time, two or three of them were strongly motivated to work at getting housing, but perhaps the most serious of their challenges was staying focused and sober long enough to move forward. And one of the most impressive and moving aspects of this community was how, to a man, they alternately supported and pressured Adrian, the youngest, and Ted, the newest of their number, to make the necessary changes to escape the street. This concern was masked in bravado at times, and in the claim that these two were less strong, fit or ready for the harshness of the streets, while they themselves could stand it awhile longer. They had already survived it for years, after all. But beneath the show of deference and concern, one could usually glimpse the fear, that maybe they’d withstood the streets for too long to ever break free. Adrian could be saved because he was still so young, and because his father still came looking for him, sitting with hims in coffee shops and going along on appointments at the OW office, visiting him in Detox and going with him to see the ruined and smelly rooms his benefits might afford, even offering him inducements to try getting clean one more time. Ted might be saved because he’d once had a substantial success in the world, and not in the too-distant past. And he had a wife who hadn't given up and wanted to be with him. And he had a dog, and what a friend a blessing and dog is when you live on the street. Maybe he could make it again.

And in fact, two years further on, Ted has made leaps. He’s been housed for over a year now. He’s reconnected with family. He’s even looking into university, to work at completing a degree. He tried making the occasional visit to the grate, “for old times”, and to reconnect with those who’d kept him alive and going when he didn’t always feel he could himself. But every time he did so, he wound up on a binge, wasted, blacked out, maybe arrested. So he finally stopped going back there. He’s learned to keep his eyes directed forward.

But Adrian didn’t make it. The last I heard of him before today was from Donnie, now housed himself, no longer with the girlfriend, working part-time, but still on the street with the guys from time to time. He told me that Adrian still came around too much, still used indiscriminately, both alcohol and whatever else was put in front of him. And now he’s gone.

Adrian isn’t the only one of my clients to die an untimely death, directly related to street life. There’ve been a few. But learning of his death today really struck me. It brought to mind the early mornings when I’d find him along the sidewalk, cold and shaking violently from early withdrawal, panning for a few dollars so he could make a trip to the beer store when it opened, to start his day right. He’d acknowledge the pain, but would then laugh it off. He’d tell me he knew what he was doing, and that he’d kick all of this. He knew how to. He’d done if before and would do it again, from will power and from the smarts he knew he had. He just wasn’t ready yet. Why pretend he was. The day would come. We’d all see.

On Becoming

As a worker in the social services, one of the great opportunities for learning comes from encounters with former clients, years after working with them. It’s a mixed bag experience that has taught me both humility and hope. It’s shown me both he power of small kindnesses and contributions, and the futility of grand plans.

Today I visited Anthony, a now 36 year old, Black male from Trinidad. Anthony is doing so well, and he knows it. Not that there aren’t disappointments, losses and hurts yet to deal with. But he’s gained perspective over the years, perspective which has made him less bitter, slower to combat, more aware and grateful when fortune and opportunity swing his way. This is maturity and wisdom I never truly believed Anthony would gain.

Thus my learning. It comes from an endless stream of the unforeseen that each encounter with a former client feeds into.

We students of human nature and human ways – which is one of the things that social workers are – are forever thinking we’ve come to a “knowing” about who and how people are. It’s not inappropriate that we so speculate; the work calls for it. We are about helping people to change their circumstances, and usually that involves encouraging and motivating them to act in ways we hope will move them toward ends they desire. It’s work that requires a continuous effort to understand.

Often though, we think we’ve reached an end point in the refinement of a theory of human ways, when really we’ve only come to a juncture, a useful intersection of life and knowledge that may tell us very little about the corner that’s up ahead.

So the Anthonys, who upset our predictions – happily and tragically – are useful and humanizing correctors. He and others, in living out the determined seeds or dreams of their becoming, teach us to temper our own analysis of the dynamic forces of life we try to tame and influence.

The most startling shock to my arrogance in predicting the end road of my clients came in a pair of encounters, with two young men I worked with in a group home in Seattle decades ago. The two of them were stereotypically opposites. One, I’ll call him Ralph, was the perfectly self-aware, respectful and cooperative kid, a favorite of all the staff, quick to come to us for advice, inviting us to know him and to help him navigate the road from a dysfunctional family to something resembling normalcy. The other, Frank, was a spoiled, self-absorbed and angry manipulator, who violated every rule and sabotaged every activity, and terrorized the other residents mercilessly. Their destinies seemed so clear. Ralph, we all knew, was destined for a responsible and satisfying life; Frank would surely end up in prison, or dead.

But years later, when a volunteer program bought me deep into the bowels of Shelton prison, it was Ralph sitting there among a group of inmates, convicted of assault and kidnapping and part way into a years long sentence. And awhile later, while attending a meeting of community leaders, it was Frank who was brought along as a promising protégé of a program director, and introduced as a creative and dynamic youth leader at the university he was attending.

This was the most shocking upset to my prognosticating powers, but there were many others. And it isn’t the predicting that’s the problem really. It’s the belief in what is foreseen, sometimes a commitment to it, that leads to options being offered or withheld, that confirms preferences and prejudices, that qualifies approval or represses a necessary confrontation. It’s thinking that I know a person’s insides better than I do, and that I can therefore judge.

So Ralph and Frank, and today, Anthony, have been important teachers to me with their surprises. I’ve learned over the years not to credit too much my insights into the workings of another human being. Many times I’ve had to see that the choice I recommended with deep conviction was not the right one, or that the explanation for an act or an omission failed to take a key factor into account. People may be stubborn and slow to change, but deep change can come unexpected and in an instant, even to the one making the choice.

And, I’ve learned that, with all our attempts to teach, coach, support, mold, even control, it isn’t always possible to know what another human being hears when you say the words you say, or what they feel when you engage them, or what part of your offerings they will hold close, even live by, years after you’ve forgotten you offered them.

It was so good to see Anthony today. He has grown so much since I worked with him. That he was glad to see me tells me that I was in some way useful to him when he felt so angry and alone. But I take no credit for who he has become. And I stand in wonder at the power and mystery of his becoming.