The events of this past work week lasted long into the evening hours of my Friday. As I was attempted to relax and enjoy dinner at my mother's house my work phone kept ringing. We had a client in crisis. I can't share the details of that but I can say it was a case of a very vulnerable adult being in a situation that was not at all conducive to her health or recovery. Our phone crisis worker was calling me. Incidentally, the phone crisis worker on duty last night was my assistant supervisor. She is doing crisis part time to make some extra cash. I owe her so much. Her name is Jamey and without her I would not be able to to my job at all. But I digress...
It was clear there was no easy answer to address the problem at hand. And the reason there were no easy answers is because of the red tape I spoke about previously. Bottom line, we could not leave this very disabled person where she was but there were no other viable options except a hospital but she did not meet the criteria (per insurance purposes) for a hospital. At the end of the night we had a couple of things in our favor. One, this person is under a Protective Placement order...meaning the court had determined she needed protection. Two, her mother is a dogged individual who can be very forward and doesn't care who she hurts to get what she wants. Normally, I don't like that in people but in this case it was exactly what we needed. Three, I'm not about threatening people when needed. And it was needed. Reminding the hospital staff that if they refused to admit this person, at least for observation, and choosing to return her to the place we felt was detrimental to her health, would mean that if anything happened to her the axe would come down hard on them. In the end, they took her.
Here's the red tape part. When all this started it was THURSDAY morning. The powers that be addressed the issues we were bringing to them by sending out a specialist to meet with the staff of the lousy place. The result of that meeting was they felt the place was trying to do their best. Not twelve hours later, all this other crap took place. It seems no matter how much my teams want to ensure the people we work with are well cared for and out of harms way, it has become an almost impossible task. And the constant feeling (knowing) that if something goes wrong (which it did) WE are always the ones who will be questioned and accused is just too much to bear.
We read alot about those people, kids, families, who fall through the cracks in the social work world. Those abused kids who end up dead and then everyone asks, "Why didn't the social worker know this would happen? Why didn't they do anything?" Well, guess what. They probably sincerely tried. But in a system that is horribly underfunded, and made to resemble the worst of HMO's, which piles case after case on already overworked people, so much so that you can never really get to know who you're working with or why, and then spends all it's time creating mountains of extraneous stuff for those workers to do all in the name of Quality Assurance making it even more impossible to get to know them...well, you get the point. PEOPLE get lost, PEOPLE get marginal services, PEOPLE get dead.
At least time, last night...that didn't happen...not on Jamey's watch.
2 comments:
girl i'm sorry i haven't been over here this week. it's been a helluva week for me too.k, so now i've made the chili, the dishes are in the dishwasher, lowell george is singing to me on the finetune player so now i can take a minute. :) my heart has been bleeding for you this week. i know you speak the truth and i'm so not looking forward to this part of social work. it's just my opinion but all this bureaucratic crap started when the powers that be decided we all needed a friggin degree. Now we have to justify those degrees on paper and this does not leave time for actual client care. sucks. i'm grateful for my degree don't get me wrong and i do believe we need one but it seems that a masters or lcsw is required to make the "big bucks" now. that sucks too. i'm not sure i want to be an administrator...it's not why i went into social work. i went into it to do field work, case management and i believe i can do that appropriately with minimal supervision. i hope you get it all worked out. if not just keep your eyes on the prize that's a few years down the road (the move) :) if things keep going here like they are maybe the boy and I will follow you over there :)
have i ever given you my email address? its listed on my profile page i think but it's prinpronisse at gmail dot com. i don't always like to post who i really am or what i really think (i cuss alot) in comments. i can be very entertaining :) as i'm sure you can be :)
anyway getting to my week...girl i had 400 readers this week, with almost 600 page views and almost 100 offsite clicks...my god my head was dizzy! i could not keep up with it all! usually i check the stats about 3 times a day, when i get up, about 3 before i go get the boy from work and before i go to bed. i had so many overnight wednesday into thursday that it went way past the 5 pages of stats statcounter gives you for free. that was almost triple what i normally get. guess i'll have to post more of what michael weiss writes, huh? :) on a sad note though, not one of them made a comment. out of all that i had 9 comments :( that includes your two. thanks. it's calmed down somewhat thankfully so i can get back to normal. that's the most i've ever had in one week i think. it would have been even more exciting if they had all been from social work bloggers :) i know, i know...i'm one of those that if you give me an inch, i'll take a mile. comes from having to scrap for everything for so many years. anyway i've been contributing my share to global warming for two days by re-drying this load of clothes in the dryer because i don't want to fold them and i'm feeling a bit guilty about it so i guess i better go and do that. take care of yourself...glass of wine, bubbles in the hot bath, music, chill for awhile. you deserve it! have a great weekend!
Thanks for letting us see the other side. It is sad all around.
Post a Comment