Madness...

Every day we're hit with more bad news. It seems the news media is hell bent on making damn sure we are ever aware of the racial and economic inequities between us and uses each incident of violence to widen chasm of hatred and bigotry. I watched in sadness as the events in Ferguson, MO unfolded. I sat in stunned silence when I heard that two officers had been shot "execution" style in New York. And today, the news reports that right here in Wisconsin an Officer will not face criminal charges for shooting a man who was sleeping in a park several months ago. Of course the officer was white and the man was black. It was self defense. None of that matters. What matters is that this is just another day in this crazy messed up country of ours.

We have allowed ourselves to succumb to the constant battering of fear and hate that is broadcast daily on our televisions. The news media reports in such a way that it keeps us all on edge, wary of each other, not trusting. We don't know why for sure, we just know we don't trust the other guy. It could be his color. Maybe it's his neighborhood. Maybe he speaks differently or doesn't have the same kind of job as we do or maybe no job at all! God forbid he be one of "those" people who needs food stamps. "They" are all lazy ne'er do wells who could all be working but choose not to. How do we know? Because our news media tells us it's true. They make it easy to identify the "bad" guy too by using selective adjectives like "white" police officer and "black" man. It sickens me. I have been following these cases closely on social media and this type of race baiting brings out the worst of the trolls. Those people so hidden in internet anonymity that they will say and post anything. I've seen some of the most hateful, horrendous things posted and it makes me ill. When did America lose the capacity to care for it's own? When did the steps our forefathers made, those in the civil rights movement, become so clouded that this current generation doesn't even remember their meaning anymore? Why do we hate so much?

We cannot rely on our government to change this. That's not going to happen. Government can only do so much and will only do what suits it best. We cannot rely on churches to change this. Religions have been the cause of so much of the in-fighting for centuries. We must rely on each other! We have to stop and think. Take a breath. Realize that we have the same heart. The same soul. We are family. The Human Family. We have to start taking care of one another and stop fearing each other.

I'm trying to hold on to the hope of this Christmas season but my heart and head are so heavy right now. It's such a sad, sad world we live in.

Deadlines, deadlines everywhere...

Since changing to a new funding source over a year ago there has been a significant increase in the amount of paperwork we have to do here now. And, of course, someone in an office somewhere much higher up than we has decided that new paperwork must mean new deadlines. Given that the type of paperwork we do seems to constantly be under revision and rewrites it's virtually impossible to keep up. Then when we are audited we are inevitably slammed on not meeting our deadlines. Madness!!

One of the new forms we have to do is to send out a notice of a denied service. Apparently just talking it over with the person isn't enough. We have to talk it over, put it in writing, send that to an administrator, who sends it up the food chain and it eventually gets signed and sent out to the person being denied. That one piece of paper has to be seen by at least four people before the person it's intended for ever actually gets it. And all of this has to be done within 14 days of original request so if any one of those 4 people hangs onto it for any reason the original sender is out of compliance. Then we, after talk again to the person being denied to let them know no decision has been made, have to start all over again with another written denial and up the chain it goes. I swear this makes no sense to me but I realized a few months ago that if I try to use common sense in any of this I just end up making myself crazy. What's crazier is that more than once in all of these procedures we have actually had to start over because someone responsible for form revision has revised the form in the middle of all this and we can't use the old form if there's a new form..... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

It seems that in this age of faster electronics and communication media at our fingertips the world of social work keeps taking one step forward and two steps back.