[1220] Another Day

Fair warning, this is some inside-baseball level of digression about my recent job addiction counseling and case-managing.

About 5 months ago, I began working for a company in Indianapolis that a friend and former coworker had been working for for a year. She told me regularly about the turnover, disorganization, lack of training, etc. I knew, well in advance, what type of space I’d be jumping into if I decided to work there. She was only part-time and it was supplementing her other job. She made it work, so I figured I could make it work. I did, part-time, in between my shifts working for the YMCA.

I’m not an average employee. I do all the “extra” stuff to make a space accountable and tolerable. I’ve digressed on this before. Today feels necessary to record because it’s the straw that broke the back day. It’s the pivot point after a culmination of what I’ve been witnessing or writing and discussing for months.

Literally, every single measure I attempted to create or adopt to stabilize my work environment has been rebuked.

There was chaos in the mornings about which houses were going to which rooms to be lead by which counselors, every day. It took weeks to get a white board with consistent accurate information so that I could expect to go to the same place and see the same people each day.

They try to implement supplemental education on financial literary and yoga, all with their own disorganized and inconsistent people and schedules. The expectations changed week to week. When I finally set one, it was overruled almost as if it was an allergic reaction.

For the past 2 weeks, the white board was no longer being updated, and after 2 hours of an entire house sitting around waiting for someone to arrive in a different room, they were added to my group for the last 45 minutes. No notice to them or me. No one even knew or cared to ask why they were sitting around for 2 hours. This was the last thing I had left.

They had no case management system, so I built one. Then they lost their funding, case managers, and cut or erased everyone’s pay overnight with no plan or direction.

They didn’t coordinate with any service providers. I, and other case managers, attempted to bring people in who provide free phones, get felons hired, or find low-income housing. Each attempt complained about and ended after an office manager refused to create a new transportation logistical plan.

I was hired to do 3 hours of group a day. Over the last few months, after previous DMHA complaints, they said a therapist has to run at least one hour of my group, then it became two hours, then today I open the group note to see the therapist already filled it out for the 3 hours under her name. So, I drove an hour to work to babysit for 45 minutes and not get paid?

In 5 months I go fro making about $1,100 every 2 weeks, which isn’t great to begin with, that’s more than halved, without notice, when casework is killed. Apparently then I’d be expected to shuffle rooms, stay later, and speed through random material to functional strangers in order to record an hour at the end of 3 groups to make, a couple hundred bucks?

They admitted people with a whole host of mental health conditions we were not equipped to deal with. One, 2 days ago, shot and killed someone. The entire time he was in our program, staff referred to him as “crazy,” and “not suited for this level of care.”

They currently have people they are housing, giving controlled substance medication to, and transporting, who aren’t enrolled in the system.

I never planned to quit this way. I feel like I’m watching the movie of who this is happening to, but thankfully have been in this field and alive long enough to have been managing the decline and chaos along the way. I was the one talking my colleagues down who have been threatening to quit for weeks. I’m the one trying to find what’s salvageable while everyone’s crying about what’s burning.

The being confronted by the owner told me what I had been intuiting in the most direct way. He wasn’t interested in accountability or learning, he was hunting. He’s been unable to demonstrate leadership the entire time I’ve been there. Today, when I warned my clients that if the accountability calls get made as they were expressed to me today, they should have a plan for where they’ll live. They took that to mean “this place is closing down” which I explicitly said that was not what I was saying.

Should it be shut down? Probably. Will it? I have no idea. If I care about my clients and being accountable, I’m not going to provide a hopeless catastrophic vision of what’s happening, but I’m also not going to pretend like the way in which that place is operating is sustainable. All of the therapists are leaving. The desk staff. The turnover on “peer support” has been incredible. Meanwhile, they think they can start and operate an even higher level of care PHP program, as they chase anyone with the competence and ability to run it away.

This kind of thing is too typical. It’s so played. I almost feel like I’m wasting my breath talking about another environment where people’s greed, ambivalence, and ego bring consequences to dozens, but wish to be held harmless. In fact, wish to hunt for more witches undermining their ends.

Anyway, I’ve got jobs lined up. I’m still populating the step-down house. I practice what I preach in counseling, and yet again, am prepared to shoulder the consequences of maintaining standards of care and concern for people. I can write about it. I can create around it. I can’t control your individual shit you’re willing to hurl in my direction.