What the hell is wrong with people these days?

A girl named Amanda kills herself after constant bullying by her school mates and people are leaving horrible comments about how "she deserved it" on a web page created as a remembrance of her.

A man masquerades as a deaf, disabled young man and gets hundreds of people to follow him on Twitter and on his blog as he tells them of his feelings and dreams. People start to really care about this guy only to have a blog entry by his sister state that he became ill and passed away causing people who felt they knew him to mourn. Now it's discovered the whole thing was false. There never was a deaf, disabled guy or a sister. It was some attention seeking man who made the whole thing up.

We're in the heated months before a major election and any semblance of responsible, educated discussion has been reduced to hate filled memes and idiotic name calling. I've even seen memes about individuals religious beliefs which, I know, are intended to be jokes but are on the edge of bad taste and hatefulness.

I just don't get it. Where did we as a society lose our sense of common decency and genuine kindness for each other? There was a time when people acting in this manner would feel a sense of shame for their actions which went a long way in keeping idiots from this type of behavior. There's something to be said for understanding shame.

People study our society and they start to blame bad behavior and ignorance on many sources. The one that gets bantered about most is poverty. Yes, I concede that being poor and struggling does have an impact on one's life. I certainly did not grow up in the lap of luxury. Far from it. But to blame high crime, indecency and ignorant behavior on poverty is misguided. There are plenty of fine, upstanding people living in or at the poverty level in this country who grow up knowing how to treat people decently. Sometimes pundits will blame single parent families as the cause of this. They'll say growing up with two parents is paramount in being a decent human being. I don't get that either. I know many people who have been raised by a single mom or a single dad and they managed to raise them as kind, caring individuals.

I think the greater problem is that we, as a society, have allowed our own standards to slip so low that we, as a whole, have created this problem. We simply do not stand up for one another any more. We don't take time to get to know each other. How many of your neighbors do you speak to each week? Or daily? I've lived in places where I couldn't even tell you the name of the person next door. And I've lived in places where neighbors shared a cup of coffee, dropped  off home grown veggies and watched each others kids. Believe me, the latter is better.

We have, by our own omission, made factions of people feel isolated and unwelcome in our cities and towns. We have witnessed bad behavior and stayed silent. Worse, we stayed silent when it happens within our own families.

It makes me cry to think of Amanda, so alone she could only think to take her own life. But it makes me sadder to see those people who think so little of a human life that, even after she's gone, they post venomous crap about her. Pity. And shame on them. If they were my son or daughter, their computer would be gone forever and I would make sure they spent every moment of their free time volunteering in someway to make a contribution to society, instead of being the little bitches they've shown themselves to be.

It makes me sad to think there is someone out there who would create a persona to take advantage of other people's feelings. But it makes me sadder to know there is someone out there so isolated that he felt that was the only way to get any meaningful interaction with another human being.

It makes me sad to know there are people who have to resort to name calling and anger in an election. What makes me sadder is that those people, whether Democrat or Republican, take so little time in understanding the real issues that need to be addressed in this election. And sadder still to see the pure hatred some people can spew on the Internet.

I work with people every day and, most days, I enjoy it but I have to be honest and tell you that there are some days when I just don't like people at all. On those days, I just need to shut down, read a book, get away and breathe. Today is one of those days.

Learning to let go...

Yesterday was interesting. I had to meet with my teams to review the standards and practices of documentation in a client's file. I had prepared a very upbeat presentation keeping in mind to remind them all that while they were overall getting the essence of what was needed there were areas we needed to tweak. This wasn't new information or new material or new procedures so I was totally unprepared for the response I got. Two of my workers had complete melt downs with tears. I'm ever aware of the pressure we are all under with this new system we're working in now but I had felt that in the last few months we were all getting the hang of it and dealing with the stress pretty well. I was wrong. It was very apparent that these two people were feeling stressed and scared.

The irony of this is that in reality there are maybe one or two in my team that are struggling with the documentation issues and neither of the two who cried were it! The other truth is that both of these people who were overwhelmed by "never feeling they have enough time to finish anything" have some pretty serious time management issues going on. It's their own inability to effectively manage their time that is causing them the most pressure. The others who are having the documentation problem are really struggling because they are just not good writers. They can't seem to formulate clear, concise and cohesive case notes because they just don't know how to write something in that manner.

SO... I spent the rest of the day creating a plan of action to help support them in their work. Here's what I came up with..

1. I gave everyone a clear year long one page planner and asked them to write the require contact information on it - when a face to face visit is required, when a collateral contact is required, when case reviews need to be done, etc.

2. I'm sending two people to "Basic Principle of Care Management" training in November. Sometimes going back to the basics is the best thing.

3. I'm getting hand held recorders for the teams so they can dictate their case notes and then they can be entered by our data entry person. This way those who lack writing skills won't have to stress about it.

4. I've convinced the agency to invest in some lap tops with Internet capability to be loaded with our forms and systems access so that workers can enter assessment, review and service plan information in real time...as they are actually interviewing the clients. I was uber-surprised when the boss said yes!!

Hopefully, all of this will increase our quality in this one area. I think it will. And I think it will go a long way to de-stress some of these people.

Now the time management issue... yeah, that's my next hurdle.