The Non-judgmental Practitioner
Thoreau famously stated, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”
In discerning about how to write this blog – in my reflections and prayers (yes, I pray – or at least try to) – I have thought hard about how to describe being non-judgmental without coming across as, well, judgmental.
Rabbi Hillel in Ethics of the Fathers is quoted as saying, “Do not judge your fellow until you are in his place.” In the 7th Chapter of the Matthew in the New Testament it reads, “Judge not, that you not be judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
Am I suggesting you have to be religious or spiritual to understand judgment and the importance of non-judgment? No. I just happen to think these particular pieces provide guidance to me on how I think about how to be a non-judgmental practitioner.
Am I willing to accept that how homeless (or formerly homeless) people in my community live their lives is not something that I can or should judge? Or do my own values influence how I see the issue? Can I frame my thinking from an ethical standpoint (rules within a specific context to determine what is right or wrong)? Or do my morals override (how things should work or be understood as right or wrong based upon my individual ideals)?
Some examples…
You live an abstinent lifestyle but have service participants that use alcohol and other drugs. Your own morals may suggest abstinence is best – perhaps because of your own personal experience or religious beliefs.
You are personally against abortion and believe that life starts at conception. The laws of the land indicate that abortion is legal, and you may have female clients that are seeking assistance with knowing the whereabouts of an abortion clinic.
You believe that sex outside of marriage is sinful. Yet unmarried clients you are supporting may be seeking condoms to prevent disease or pregnancy.
You are against corporal punishment. However, it remains legal in domestic/home settings where you live. You see parents spanking or hand-slapping their children after the child has done something wrong.
See my point?
I have come to accept that I am remarkably flawed human being. I have so many faults that I am on the precipice of being perfectly imperfect. Do I want to be judged? Goodness knows I judge myself plenty. I don’t need someone else doing it too. I know the areas of my life that I suck at…some are a work in progress, some are on the to-do list, and others are on the “I have accepted it will always be there and now let’s move on” list.
But it isn’t because I have an exhaustive list of defects that I cannot and will not judge others.
It is because I have learned to accept that the people I serve will be different than me. This makes them no better or worse – just different. There are laws and due processes that we, as a society, have put into place to deal with the bigger stuff like murder and abuse and victimization and exploitation. The other stuff? Unless I am ready to hold a mirror shoulder high and say it to myself (gulp) I am certainly not in a position to pass any commentary on others. I haven’t walked a mile in their shoes nor can I point out the sawdust in their eye when there is a log in my own. Or from the wisdom of Thoreau, am I willing to see all the strengths and opportunities within the person, or is what I see only the defects and shortcomings and past mistakes? Guess it depends on what I see. I hope to see the good in everyone.
Wow – That is a Big Number
This is a short, supplemental blog to acknowledge the amazing achievement that the 100K Homes Campaign and the Campaign Communities reached today, announcing that the goal has been surpassed (101,628 of which over 30,000 were Veterans).
Whether your community participated in the campaign or not, you need to learn from what they were able to accomplish.
Others may outline this better than I, but here is what I have taken away from the experience:
Have steadfast fixity of purpose and don’t waiver from it.
Set a target that stretches you beyond your comfort zone.
Appreciate that imperfect action trumps perfect planning…much is to be learned from the art of doing.
Put together a kick-ass leadership team.
Create excitement amongst service providers and celebrate their awesomeness and leverage their expertise.
Don’t lose sight of the people that you serve…the homeless persons that receive housing.
Prioritize who gets housed rather than creaming or first come, first served.
Pull in geniuses like the Rapid Results Institute to accelerate change even more.
Challenge dominant thinking in a community if that dominant thinking is entrenched in ineffective ways of doing things.
Stay on message in talking about your achievements.
This campaign may go down as the greatest game changer that has ever happened in the sector. High five to every homeless person housed through the campaign; high five to every campaign community; high five to every elected official and government employee that supported the campaign; high five to every volunteer that participated in a registry week; high five to Community Solutions and the 100K Homes Campaign team.
Compassion
Those who work on social matters – by and large – are people filled with compassion, or at least initially attracted to the work because of their strong sense of compassion.
‘Compassion’ is a beautiful noun, initially born from the Latin ‘compati’ which means “to suffer with”. In essence, compassion is solidarity coupled with tenderness and mercy, and a steadfast resolve to alleviate and conquer hardship.
Much has been written about the need for improved data in addressing and solving social issues – and that is a good thing. Much has been written about the need for strategic and informed programming and policy development grounded in evidence – and that is also a good thing. There is an increasing understanding of compassion fatigue and the impacts that has on helpers – and this is good knowledge to have.
But we should never lose sight of the compassion that drives most people to address social issues in the first place. It is for this reason that I know with absolute certainty that there are only ever going to be six types of people that need your compassion:
Someone’s mother
Someone’s father
Someone’s sister
Someone’s brother
Someone’s daughter
Someone’s son
These are the only people with whom we shall ever suffer with, and these will always be those most deserving of a steadfast fixity of purpose to ensure their hardship is alleviated and resolved. Keep this in mind and you can exert the fullest potential of your compassion.
#YESALLHOMELESSWOMEN
I am not an expert on women’s issues, women’s safety, women’s empowerment, or women’s health, nor do I claim to have specific expertise on women’s homelessness. Like many of my male friends, the #YESALLWOMEN hashtag experience exposed me to some of the most sensitive, personal, violent, demeaning and unacceptable experiences of many female friends. It was jarring, but important learning for me on the magnitude and far reach of women’s experiences with men – and both threats and experiences of violence.
Reading this helped me put some of what was happening into context. While I have intentionally applied a gender lens to matters of homelessness in specific projects, I have more to learn. I knew, for example, that women face higher degrees of exploitation and higher rates of sexual assault than males that are experiencing homelessness, but recent events caused me to look deeper into the issue.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the literature on sexual assault episodes and homeless women point to several limitations in capturing data from the population. Part of this stems from under-reporting within an already vulnerable and marginalized population (on top of generally accepted under-reporting of rape and sexual assault generally), as well as the experience of homeless persons engaging with police generally. All the same, as I read through scholarly articles and other publications, here is a smattering of what I learned:
homeless women are likely to have experienced sexual assault before, during and even after their experience of homelessness;
because victimization often is a precipitating factor for women’s homelessness, any approach to addressing homelessness than uses a “law and order” rather than a service driven response presents greater risks for retraumatizing women;
while rates of sexual assault have generally gone down, this same trend is not experienced with homeless women where the rates of sexual assault have remained unchanged;
homeless women are more likely to experience multiple victimizations from multiple perpetrators;
almost two-thirds of homeless women have experienced intimate partner violence as adults;
over the past 12 months, greater than 1 in 10 homeless women report being raped – and over half of these report being raped more than once;
approximately 1 in 5 homeless women will have been raped at some point in her lifetime;
impacts of the sexual assault are both physical and psychological, with higher rates of depression, suicide attempts and ideation, and dependent use of alcohol or other drugs to deal with the effects;
homeless women are disproportionately victims of hate speech;
one study from the mid 1990s even found that some men even saw a woman’s homelessness as a “license for sexual abuse”;
undoubtedly, homelessness is a risk factor for sexual assault.
So what is to be done? We can take steps to improve safety for homeless women. Here are 10 ideas that have crossed my mind or examples that I have seen in practice in other jurisdictions:
Focus on housing as the solution to homelessness. Safe, secure and affordable housing decreases the likelihood of experiencing sexual assault.
Through outreach and shelters, expand knowledge of available sexual assault resources within the community to help address and work on recovery from past experiences.
Further educate outreach workers – especially street outreach workers – on how best to work with women they encounter that have experienced sexual violence and/or victimization, and how to work with law enforcement in report it.
Provide adequate women’s only shelter resources in community – beyond Domestic and Intimate Partner Violence Shelter – for homeless women. A stand-alone, safe facility is preferred. However, if in a shared facility, a separate entrance with appropriate staffing and secure sleeping area is possible as an alternative.
Expand access to women’s health resources through health services available to homeless persons.
Address stigma, sexism and inappropriate comments and actions amongst service providers, government programs, and other homeless persons where/if it is encountered.
Integrate education of homeless women’s issues into orientation to homeless services for new employees.
Expand integrated offerings of homeless women’s issues into conferences at a local and national level – not solely as a “special track” but as a core element to presentations, seminars and workshops.
As resources allow, permit formerly homeless women to select a woman as a case manager, if preferred.
Integrate local sexual assault resources and law enforcement specializing in matters of sexual assault with homeless service provision rather than separate systems to be navigated (and re-telling of experience thereby potentially re-traumatizing).
Want to know more? A small example of the research that exists on the subject:
The University of Ottawa’s Institute for the Prevention of Crime: Homelessnesss, Victimization and Crime, 2008.
Novac, S., Brown, J., & Bourbonnais, C. (1996). No Room of Her Own: A Literature Review on Women and Homelessness. Ottawa: Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
No Safe Place: Sexual Assault in the Lives of Homeless Wome by Lisa A. Goodman, Ph.D., Katya Fels, & Catherine Glenn, M.A. with contributions from Judy Benitez
Victimization and Special Challenges of Women. Ontario Women’s Justice Network, 2008.
Tyler et al. The Effects of Early Sexual Abuse on Later Sexual Victimization Among Female Homeless and Runaway AdolescentsJournal of Interpersonal Violence. March 2000, Volume 15, No. 3, 235-250.
The Street Health Report, 2007.
On the Precipice of Advancing the Revolution, We Attack the Talented Revolution Leaders
Now, the time is now
We can still turn it around
Raise your voice like a weapon
Til they fall to the ground
Light, let there be light
Without a shadow of doubt
We will fight tooth and nail until
Salvation is found
–Viking Death March, Billy Talent
It would really be something if all voices were raised in unison to complete the radical change of ending homelessness. If there is one thing I have learned about a career in this sector where I have often been the misfit…the divergent thinker – it is that when you are making strides in change there are people that will be ready to try and tear you down. What astounds me is that this tear down happens from within the group that does comparable work and/or proclaims to share the same passion for the population.
House homeless people directly from the street without using shelters or transitional housing, like I did for many years, and you will be accused of being anti-shelter or siphoning off resources to where they are really needed, or somehow making the lives of homeless people worse because they are alone and don’t have the socialization they once had on the street. Or people will agree that housing people is a good thing, but because you haven’t resolved their poverty you have somehow failed.
Try to undertake a Point in Time count with rigour to account for those that may have been missed using a capture-recapture technique and you will be accused of getting “too cute” with an otherwise simple task, or trying to fabricate (inflate?) numbers or distort the truth. Or people will agree that the concept is good, but they will disagree on some aspect of the methods and therefore try to throw the entire thing under the bus.
Create a training curriculum to elevate the professional development of case managers within the industry that serves homeless and under-housed persons, and people will be quick to tell you that it disrespects those well intentioned men and women with big hearts who do this work because their church compels them to, or you will be told that what you are doing is too basic for those that are already professionals. Or people will tell you that your ideas are fantastic, but not implementable where the training is occurring because: a) it is unique; or, b) there is no leadership that will allow it; or, c) the people that have been doing it for a long time do it differently; or, d) it is a very conservative (or liberal) place where these sorts of ideas just don’t fly; or, e) all of the above.
Spend years researching and testing how to assess the support and housing needs of homeless families and individuals, and there will be somebody (trust me) that believes the research is inadequate. Or someone will argue that because you won’t share every last detail of the work with them publicly that it isn’t credible. Or that while assessing is a good idea, it is a waste of time because people have been at this a long time and just know who needs what type of help intuitively.
Develop an action-oriented plan to end homelessness and there will be naysayers that suggest what is needed is action, not planning. Others will insist the plan goes to far (or not far enough). Some will tell you that some critical action or evidence-informed practice that is suggested is not as credible as the data and literature suggests or that it can’t possibly work where you are because your circumstances are just so different.
This work is hard enough. There are huge injustices to tackle. There are massive problems to solve. And there are some remarkably talented and dedicated and intelligent and passionate people that are trying to work on it. Must we tear them down? Must we burn them out? Must we cast a shadow of doubt on everything they do? Can we not find a more constructive voice for dialogue?
I will fight tooth and nail until justice is found. But I admit there are times I am tired and weary. Not because of the 16 hour days or hundreds of days on the road each year. Nor am I tired and weary because of the time spent away from my family. Nor am I tired and weary from changing time zones on an all-too-frequent basis. I am tired and weary from the bickering and attacks within the industry, from the lack of solution-focused conversations between colleagues and peers, from the politics of difference. We can do better. We should demand it from each other.
The PG Me
Recently I was asked if I could make sure a presentation PG. The organizers were concerned that the message of the talk would be lost if I said too many provocative things or my language was too colourful. There may be some truth to that, and I am working hard to make sure everyone knows and appreciates that I amend my approach and language depending on the situation I am in and with whom I have the pleasure of speaking.
That said, PG ain’t what a lot of people think it is. The Motion Picture Association of America says a PG-rated film may not be suitable for children. The MPAA says a PG-rated should be checked out by parents before allowing younger children to see the movie. There could be some profanity, some violence, or brief nudity, however there will not be any drug use in a PG film. By this standard, I should be able to swear, hit someone and flash the audience, so long as I don’t do drugs in front of them. (Kidding folks…I won’t do any of that.)
It is true that I say things sometimes defined as provocative. I don’t do this to be disrespectful. I am not trying to change anyone’s personal morals. I am not trying to be sensational. What I am trying to do is open people’s minds to an alternate way of thinking about homelessness and solutions to it, while simultaneously being grounded in the reality of the people we serve. It is okay for people to consider alternate viewpoints and language to explain an issue without feeling their own morals are under attack.
Depending on the audience, the subject matter, and the intent of the speech, I may end up including items about substance use, dealing drugs, sex, sexuality, the sex trade, violence, self-harm, mental illness, and/or a range of other topics that may collide with a person’s own sensibilities, morals or world view. I am not out to disrespect anyone personally, though I can appreciate these matters make people feel uncomfortable. I firmly believe we have to be able to speak about some remarkably uncomfortable things if we truly want to be person-centered and meet people where they are at in our journey with people to housing stability. The people that we work with are no better nor worse than any of us that work in the industry, just different. Different does not imply “less than”.
In the updated Promoting Wellness and Reducing Harm training we unveiled a month or so ago, this text was on a slide at the beginning as people came into the training room:
This presentation honestly, openly, respectfully, and at times graphically depicts mental illness, substance use, and matters of sex and sexuality.Some of the words, phrases, pictures and graphics may make some participants feel uncomfortable.You are encouraged to stay and learn despite your discomfort at times.You are encouraged to ask questions and open yourself up to a different way of thinking about mental illness, substance use and sex work.
Rather than shutting down the discussion about matters such as this, I think it may be best to open up the dialogue.
I have been known to use humour to take a sensitive subject that can be difficult to talk about and disarm people through laughter. In this regard I will own that I can push things even farther than some people are comfortable. Not everyone has the same sense of humour. Not everyone thinks the same things are funny. Some people are uncomfortable with themselves for laughing at things they wish they hadn’t found funny. And other times I will accept that the humour is so close to the line in my mind that it has crossed the line for others. But flirting with an imaginary line is also not an exercise in trying to be offensive.
Sometimes I hear after the fact that someone took exception to the language I used or the humour I used. Here is the thing…while there has been less than a handful that have been able to tell me they were offended with what I talked about or how I talked about it, there are hundreds – maybe even more than a thousand over the past year – that have gone out of their way to come up to me during a break or after a presentation, hit me up on FaceBook, mention @orgcode on Twitter, call or email me with compliments for being real and honest and “getting it”. I will always do my best to be authentic in what I talk about and how I talk about it. I am not saying this to be boastful. Instead, what I intend to illustrate is that while there may be a minority that can take issue with what is said or how it is said, it needs to be appreciated that there is a massive volume of people that love the style and approach that is used.
Know that I try to read my audience and the environment within which I have the honour of speaking. I will continue to say provocative things, but I will increasingly be aware that how I say those things can be very important or else the message is lost. And given the definition of PG, I can assure just about everyone that my public presentations meet that definition quite well.