Category Archives: From the field

From the field, In the neighborhood, PSA

Where will you sleep tonight?

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“Living is easy with eyes closed,
Misunderstanding all that you see…”

–Strawberry Fields

Statistics from the National Low-Income Housing Coalition indicate that the average “housing” wage needed to afford a two bedroom apartment in NJ is approximately $23.00 per hour. A “living” wage, which would also include the costs of food, utilities, daycare, transportation, insurance and the other expenses of family life would have to be… how much more? Half again, at least? Considering that the “minimum” wage in NJ is just $7.15 per hour, most of our preschool teachers, home health aides, security guards, accounting clerks, cashiers and receptionists would have to work three full-time jobs just to pay the rent.

Read that again, maybe. There’s not enough hours in a week, I don’t think.

Is it the same where you live? Do you even care?

I got to do something really fun for work today. Each year, counties in NJ and across the country, conduct a survey of the homeless population. The data gathered includes questions on how long a person or family has been homeless, how many times they have experienced homelessness in the previous three years, what incidents may have led to their homelessness and where they stay during their time homeless (hotel, shelter, on the streets, etc.) The survey asks about the services they may need, what they have been turned down for, and what they currently receive in an attempt to measure gaps in local services. The information gathered is used to justify federal grants for homeless services.

It’s a fine opportunity for local politicians to get their photo in the paper serving lunch at the soup kitchen down the street and for social workers like me to do something a little different. I’m asked to help out because I’m bilingual and because we have a good number of undocumented workers in our area that are needy and under-served by community resources.

I spent the day completing silly surveys, handing out donated winter coats, blankets, toothbrushes and interpreting for the visiting nurses who were doing free health screenings. And listening to stories. Wonderful stories from hard-working people who have a lot to offer. Some of my coworkers were out before dawn at the places where illegals gather to find work, in order to connect them with basic services like free clinics and food pantries and legal aid. Others were in mobile units visiting the homeless in abandoned buildings, or along the boardwalk, or in tent communities in the woods.

Yes, people live in the woods. Working people.

Does that surprise you? Anger you maybe, I hope?

A great many of us live with blinders on, I suppose, or imagine the poor to be deserving of the card that life has dealt them. They’re mostly lazy and like living off government handouts, right?

Do you know that cash assistance grants to families on welfare haven’t increased in more than 21 years? That a mother and child on welfare receive just $322 a month, plus a similiar amount in foodstamps, to live on? How long would $322 plus some milk and bread last you?

Pfft.

I’m faced with these numbers everyday when I do my federally-mandated job of promoting self-sufficiency for my clients. We work on budgets and planning for the future and how to make things better. The best many can hope for is a minimum wage job, which in turn, will trigger a loss of free daycare, free health insurance, free transportation and free or reduced housing. How can I sincerely push them into a full-time job that’ll keep them well below federal poverty standards and with no safety net?

None of these people are truly homeless, of course. We’ll put them up, if need be and for the sake of the children, in some seedy motel, or a horrible smelly shelter. We call that enough and blame them for it all the while.

Illegal aliens, the general public will be happy to know, receive nothing from the government. Nothing. They are not among the homeless, generally, and are very good about making do. They rely on non-profits and churches, but mostly on each other. Plus, they’re gracious and say thank you for this out-of-style-coat-that-doesn’t-fit exactly-right and then compliment you on your poor Spanish. All of which feels pretty nice.

😉

The ones we really need be concerned for are the elderly, and veterans, and the mentally ill. There’s no real way to reach them, no program in place for the ones that have truly been wronged by fate.

—End of Rant—

PD: Be an advocate for affordable housing in your area… learn the statistics… speak out!

From the field

A social worker quiz

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Match the client or landlord’s statement with the social worker’s inappropriate response:

1. “Um.. I’m calling because I got a letter from you that says my share of the rent is $16.00 and I don’t think that’s right because my income hasn’t changed… I mean I never worked so how come I got to pay $16.00 a month if I’ve always been on welfare?”

2. “Are you my new case manager? I don’t think that’s right because Miss Linda never notified me she was going out on maternity leave to have a baby and why didn’t she take care of my business first? She could have notified me I was gonna have to deal with you now. Can I talk to someone else instead?”

3. “Yes ma’am. I’m calling to find out why I haven’t received payment for the month of January yet?”

4. “I just want it on record with you that my toilet is overflowing.”

5. “My landlord is just mad because I painted the living room without asking her first.”

6. “I wanna know how come you approved me to live in this dump?!”

7. “The sheriff was just here and left a foreclosure notice on the fence. Does this mean I don’t have to pay my rent this month?”

—–

A. “Right, well… this is the government you’re dealing with!”

B. “Am I hearing you right? I must not be because it sounds like you’re complaining. And did you also notice that I payed the outstanding balance on your electric bill?”

C. “Maybe the real issue is that you haven’t paid your rent in 11 months! And will you please just stop talking for a second?!”

D. “Pay your darn rent!”

E. “Thanks for the update. Maybe you should call your landlord?”

F. “If I remember correctly, you begged me to.”

G. “Hold on while I find someone else.”

—–

Any resemblance to real or actual phone calls today from clients of mine is sad, but true.

From the field, In the neighborhood, Snapshots

On being productive

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Some of my clients make it really difficult to be compassionate, but I try to remind myself that I may be the one person they can expect it from with any sort of consistency.

My coworkers would likely say that it isn’t necessarily in my job description and that oftentimes, compassion makes my job more difficult than it need be and our stated goal of self-sufficiency for our clients less likely.

I guess, maybe, they believe that being nice gets in the way of helping people.

My idea is that helping takes many forms… some social workers do it best by being curt and all-business and never showing a bit of their own humanity with clients. That doesn’t work so well for me, as I’m not such a good pretender.

Anyway… I often feel as if I spend an inordinate amount of my workday talking to people.

Okay… that’s probably an outright lie.

😉

My internal editor stops me, sometimes, to remind me that there are a few people who read this blog who actually know me and who’ll recognize a lie that I try to pass along to all of you invisible internet friends.

Pfft.

I spend a lot of time listening to people. I don’t generally have the chance to say very much at all. Clients like to yell at me a lot. I don’t so much like that; in fact it makes me really uncomfortable and trembly with pent-up smart aleck responses to their hostility. But still I try to really listen to them. Listen to whatever it is that is at the root of their anger or their hurt or their fear. They’re not upset with me, usually, directly, but instead it’s their way of venting with someone who they imagine can change things for them, help them, maybe make things better.

It’s my job, somedays, just to let them yell.

They’re not all like this, thank heavens. Some clients are just looking for reassurance, or support, or someone to share their hard-won victories with. I listen to those clients, too, and celebrate with them.

This really isn’t productive though, right? It does nothing to reduce the piles of paper that always threaten to engulf me. There’s no visible product to present to my boss at the end of the day.

I guess for me a productive day looks much the same as any other. I wake up happy and I accomplish something, hopefully. But I can’t ever feel really satisfied unless there’s a sense that I’ve contributed in some small way to someone else’s welfare. I feel most grateful when given the opportunity to share a moment with someone – to listen in a way someone hasn’t been listened to before or to tell a story that gets someone thinking differently. Then I feel productive and as if the day’s been worth living.

That moment came for me today, after being screamed at by various others, from a client with mental health issues. He’s taken to calling me every couple days to check in and usually I just “yes” my way through any conversation with him in order to get back to the important paperwork in front of me. Today, though, I stopped to really listen and to appreciate the blessing of a client who wanted nothing from me, had no complaint or pressing need, but instead just wanted to say hello and to tell me about his day.

I think we all need help at one time or another and need to be able to depend on compassion from others, be it frazzled social workers or strangers, even. Compassion feels good, helps us, and makes the world a nicer place, somehow.

Even when it gives me a headache and makes me want to put my head in the oven.

😉

These pics, from a less *productive* moment during my day in the field yesterday; from in and around the delapidated casino on the boardwalk at Asbury Park.

Picture-taking is another productive thing I do for myself most days; a chance to see and feel without much thought or concern for the end product.

From the field, Whatever

Some days there just aren’t enough hours

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Today started out quietly enough; I got to sleep a little later than usual because it was a field day, then my first appointment wasn’t at home so I had enough time between appointments to do some end-of-season sale shopping. There was even a cute dress that I almost bought.

Stop laughing – I have been known to wear an actual dress on occasion!

Two appointments later I was thinking about lunch, but instead went for a little stroll in the sand by the bay. There was a sweet phone call and laughter with a friend. Then sometime after 1 pm things went south.

My exceptional scheduling skills had me in two places at opposite ends of the county at the same time. Impossible to accomplish. I made a decision to see the client that lived in the worst neighborhood first (I like to be in and out of certain parts of town before the hoodlums are awake and standing around on the corners) with the idea that I would have my office call the other client to let her know that I’d be late. Well… another client beat me to the punch on that one and called my office to complain that it was 2:30 and she’d cancelled her dialysis treatment and sat home all day waiting and I still hadn’t shown up. I mostly straightened that mess out, though I don’t think I made a new friend with that lady. Pfft!

I juggled and drove in circles and that damn lady wasn’t home when I got there.

Then I had a wonderful couple hours at the Y doing yoga and paying attention to my breathing and lifting weights to vent the pent up crankiness.

I came home to a crowd of neighbors standing around in the driveway with the sweetest teenage boy who’d lost control of his parent’s car and ended up somewhere in the middle of my lawn. Poor kid! He was okay, but apprently the parent’s car was not. Thankfully the tow truck and the police cars were gone by the time I got there. The kid had come back to apologize for messing up the lawn and was met first with my crazy neighbors who teased him to no end.

I sat down here, finally, to fill out my registration for the Fall Weekend, only to be interrupted to help the DH catch an injured gull down by the boat ramp. That went surprisingly well.

Gulls smell very fishy. Maybe not everyone knows that.

It’s after 9pm and I still haven’t eaten a single thing. All day.

Drank about a dozen cups of coffee though. Can’t you tell?

😉

So… I’m officially signed up for a couple days in Cape May next month and a boat tour that I hope won’t be rained out like last year’s. I got some other stuff done that I’d meant to do this weekend.

There’s still a dozen emails staring me down.

I think I’ll have a nap.

From the field, Small truths

A note of thanks to a client

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Dear D.

You humble me.

From the moment we first met, I’ve wondered at you. I’m not surprised anymore with the strength that you show; I’m astounded with it.

You have such astonishing resources of love and emotional resilience.

You let me see behind that mask of confidence on your face today; you admitted you were afraid and you cried long pent-up tears, but all I saw was your grace.

Today was your first step towards realizing some of your goals and I want to thank you for letting me play my part.

You are an exceptional woman. You can’t see that yet, but I hope one day you’ll have pride enough to match that self-confidence. It’s been hard won. You’ve come this far with almost no support from anyone.

I hope you know I’ve been cheering you on and will continue to. You deserve your very own cheering section, I think. I’m so very happy for you.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

This is the note I would’ve liked to tape onto the plant I brought D. as a housewarming gift today. The silly plant made her cry; I can only imagine what this note might’ve done.

Some people just have so much crap unjustly heaped onto their plates; others of us are so very lucky. I’m grateful that my job reminds me I’m one of the lucky ones and that there’s a lot to be learned from the poor and others that society tends to discount.

On second thought, I may just send it… it might be good for her to hear.

From the field, Whatever

Bondage

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Relax, Susan.

😉

Silly me didn’t plan far enough ahead to schedule visits for this week; which means I’m chained to the desk, to this view, for the whole long week. It’s a good thing, really. I’m feeling almost caught up now, ready to cope with whatever curveballs my clients try to toss my way.

I sort of moved in today, finally, after a year at this desk. I brought some things I love… things to make me smile, things that comfort me, things that let me feel content in this place without a view of the outside, things that remind me of happy times spent elsewhere. Honestly, I’m coveting the recently-vacated window cubicle, tho the view is far from spectacular; at least there is sight of the sky and some green and growing things. I’ll stay here anyway, on the aisle, subject to whoever happens by with something to amuse me. The distractions are constant… homemade brownies! … bochinche (gossip) that I’d missed… the boss asking me into her office, the phone forever ringing.

😉

What I’d really like is to be free of all of this… to have the summers I remember as a kid… the sun and the sand and the ocean. Freedom… freedom from being responsible to anything but what brings joy and makes me smile.

(Dreaming)

This morning, on my hike from the parking lot, there were coworkers gawking and pointing at the dozen or so turkey vultures warming their wings on the roof of the building, waiting for some warmth to lift them aloft… waiting for something to carry them away from the needs and obligations of their mundane everyday life.

From the field

Sit for a spell, but not here

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I visited a client today who didn’t have a single chair in the house. A big flat screen TV and a nice car in the driveway, but nowhere to sit.

?

No table either, but then that would require at least one chair, I guess.

The #1 Social Worker rule when making home visits is never to sit on any soft surface.

You can use your imagination to sort out the why.

The #2 Social Worker rule is to have an exit in view at all times.

Laugh all you like, but this was about the extent of my training on *how to conduct home visits* without bringing home bed bugs or getting kidnapped by a psychopath.

These rules usually find me doing business in the client’s kitchen. Today’s kitchen had a couple bicycles, a washer/dryer combo, and the most fabulously neat collection of shoes I’ve seen yet. In the kitchen that had no table or chairs.

I wanted to ask, but it felt really rude… where do you sit to eat? Where do you sit to put on any of those fabulously neat shoes?

There was no couch, either.

Weird.

Oh! I also visited this lady… remember the one who likes to call me over and over and leave the same exact message a dozen times, at three-minute intervals, on my voicemail? Very, very nice lady who lives in the most awful of neighborhoods. Very organized, too, apparently. Her kitchen didn’t have a table either, but the fridge was covered with post-it notes. As was part of the bathroom mirror and most of one wall in her bedroom. In big block letters on one of those post-its was my name and phone number. Next to it was my business card, labeled also in big block letters, “CASEWORKER”. Next to that she’d printed out my field and office schedule.

Weird.

Explains a lot though, probably.

Mind you, I’m not making fun exactly… just sort of pondering what to do with these glimpses into other people’s lives and homes.

From the field, Whatever

Make it stop (spinning)

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There are days when the office feels like a nuthouse and others, like today, when it’s almost a nice place to be. Of course the weather was gorgeous and the thought of sneaking off to the beach occurred to me more than once (it’s Friday and payday, after all) but I was glad to sit at my desk and make some headway, one ear listening to Justin Nozuka and the other to the silly raucous banter that goes on during a typical Friday.

Because we social workers all have different field days, the office dynamic changes from day to day depending on who’s in. Fridays are a favorite office day for me; I like the mix of people. There’s just 7 of us, plus the clerical staff, so it’s relatively quiet, especially compared to Tuesday’s when all 18 of us are there. I loathe Tuesdays: for their noise, the incessant phone ringing, the emergencies that have popped up over the weekend, my phone blinking with 25 messages after spending Monday in the field visiting clients.

This week was a crazy upside-down week for me. I got a lot done and finally got the nerve up to ask for help with all the stuff I’ve been behind with. Two new social workers who’ve joined the unit since me needed practice and were glad to have some of my work to do.

😉

I hadn’t really dealt with my voicemail messages since last Friday. I finally, painfully, listened to them all, all the way through, today at about 3. Amazingly, most of the *emergencies* of the past week had worked themselves out without any intervention on my part. That was a valuable lesson to me. Sometimes procrastination pays off.

The lady who’d first left a message over the weekend, full of so much hostility that I simply slapped the phone closed mid-message on Monday, called today to say that she had worked it all out and actually solved one of her own problems for a change.

😉

And then she thanked me for my help.

(wtf?)

Seven of my clients have moved in the past month (each move requiring a telephone book’s worth of paperwork). Three are about to be evicted for non-payment of rent (in each case, both the tenant and the landlord seem to think I wield some magic wand to make it all okey-dokey and one wants my help in running off to Arkansas to avoid a court date). Two families have bedbug and/or roach infestations. One tenant, a hoarder, insists on my help in finding a new, bigger place in which to pile up his crap. The roof fell in on the apartment of another. A landlord complains about the expense of replacing bullet-shot windows and siding. Another’s adult daughter will be released from the psychiatric hospital this month, pregnant, with no place to live.

But all that’s for next week.

Now it’s the weekend.

(In case you wonder, I work for this program and not, as I sometimes imagine, this one.)

And, no, I haven’t posted this pic upside down. It was taken in the fall at the Cape May hawk-banding demo and the red-tail was twirling around in the speaker’s hand, spinning in circles, and paused feet-up for my pic.

Birds, From the field, Snapshots, Whatever

One world

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My habit of staying up late keeps me in touch with the neighborhood owls. I hear the great-horneds calling often, from the cemetary across the street or the black locust tree in our back yard, a favored perch, perhaps, because it’s the largest overlooking the farm fields and baseball green that borders our property. I’d imagine there to be lots of critters that fall within earshot of any owl perched in that tree. The screech owl, like this little one here, visits only occasionally and I’ve never been able to pinpont exactly where the whinny call originates from. Screech owls are tiny and delicate and disappear into the darkness much easier than the great-horneds whose silhouette is hard to mistake, even in the pitch black.

Of the great-horned owl Mary Oliver writes: “I know this bird. If it could, it would eat the whole world. In the night, when the owl is less than exquisitely swift and perfect, the scream of the rabbit is terrible. But the scream of the owl, which is not of pain and hopelessness and the fear of being plucked out of the world, but of the sheer rollicking glory of the death-bringer, is more terrible still. When I hear it resounding through the woods… I know I am standing at the very edge of the mystery, in which terror is naturally and abundantly part of life, part even of the most becalmed, intelligent, sunny life… The world where the owl is endlessly hungry and endlessly on the hunt is the world in which I live too. There is only one world.”

I had an experience at work today that made me feel guilty for my happy and peaceful life and for delighting in simple things. Most days in the field visiting clients are that way, to some extent but, my God, some people just have so much awfulness heaped upon them. I walk in and out of their lives and their homes, have them fill out a bunch of silly papers, and then go back to my life of plenty. Yet, I’m collecting their stories in some part of me, so many sad stories that I can almost begin to imagine the same terrible circumstances on the periphery of my own life, just waiting for the chance to descend like an owl in the darkness. The recognition of that possibility, acknowledging the unmistakable shape in the pitch dark or the ability to see the little hunter hidden among the pine boughs… I’m not sure what that means. I wonder if it serves any purpose in my life or if it makes me any better at the work I do with clients. Maybe I’m just thinking too much or paying too much attention to stories and screams in the dark.

Owl pics are education birds from the Avian Wildlife Center who gave a children’s program tonight at our monthly Audubon meeting.

From the field, Remembering, Small truths

The older we get…

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“Seek out old people. When you find some, give them joy. Listen closely. Remember that each old person is a library. Listen closely. Be useful. Bring the gift of yourself. Be voluntary. Visit with magic. Try playing their game. Let wisdom seep in. Cradle your own future old person. Be gentle. Listen closely. Pay attention to an old person. The treasures will be revealed.” –Sark, A Creative Companion

I had a second visit with an eighty-something-year old client today; quite the character this man is! Today’s visit was a bit more enjoyable than our last in early January; he’s since been fitted for a hearing aid and we didn’t need to shout at one another this time. He’s almost practically blind with glaucoma so couldn’t read the letter I’d sent to let him know I’d be stopping by. I stood in the pouring rain for the ten minutes it took him to get to the door with his walker to let me in and then he couldn’t see me to remember who I was.

😉

The real purpose of my visit was to make sure that his landlord had done some necessary repairs that I’d required, but I could have just as easily done that over the phone – but for all that shouting! – the fact is that I love to visit my elderly clients in person when possible. They’re often grumpy, but I love them anyway and usually end up feeling like I want to bring them home with me or at least adopt them for the holidays.

We had a nice visit and chatted about all his health issues and the problems he’s been having adjusting to the hearing aid. Then the stories started – that’s what I look forward to the most, you know! He told me about the jazz band he played horn in for many years – dixieland – and the time his band was asked to play at a funeral and had all the mourners up and dancing in the back of the funeral chapel. He also told about a half dozen bad jokes, but I laughed and he laughed and that’s what matters, I guess.

Most of the seniors I visit live alone and are too far from family to have any sort of support network in place. Plus, I imagine they’re really lonely and like the chance to talk with someone who’s kind enough to listen.

I know it was that way with my dad. I used to pity the poor telemarketer or grocery store clerk who met him when he was in a talkative mood – which was practically always! – he could go on and on for hours and mostly my brothers and I had already heard all of his stories at least a thousand times so had stopped listening, really. I regret that now, of course, and sometimes feel like I would give almost anything to hear my dad tell the story of breaking my mother’s Christmas angel or any of the hundreds of others he had saved up, just one more time.

I think the lesson for me in this is that it’s too easy to take your own family for granted; the old guy I saw this morning has a few sons around, but I wonder if they are able to delight in him the way I found myself doing today. It’s not easy to do, I guess, when other issues or emotions get in the way of just enjoying one another’s company, but I think courtesy, a lot of patience and some extra attention can go a long way in making the elderly feel like they have something to offer the rest of us. It doesn’t take much to be kind, does it? And they see far and know so much; we need only really listen.