This Work Is Hard

Originally written for my friends in WV, this is a shout out and high five to all those who work their butts off on the frontline.

This work is hard. Really hard. It can burn you out. Make you curse to the point where you make yourself blush. Lead you to question why you ever started down this road.

Units will get trashed. Landlords will be angry. Some people you are supporting will die. Needles will be found. Overdoses will happen. Every now and then you may be surprised to find something weird…a snake frozen in a freezer…a two gallon jug filled with urine…Simpson’s-themed porn…

Don’t give up, you wonderful helper, you. Don’t give up.

Rents will not always be paid on time and in full. Case management goals will not always be met. Some days will be spent jumping from crisis to crisis rather than doing proactive work. Every now and then you find what you think could be the poster-child for what success looks like (for today anyway).

Co-workers will engage in office politics. Case notes will need to be done. Data must be entered. A drop-off of donations will happen at the least best possible moment.

Don’t give up, you wonderful helper, you. Don’t give up.

You’ve told yourself to practice good self-care. You still have days, well, you don’t. An extra glass of wine here, a little intrusive imagery when trying to sleep there.

Program participants will complain. Community partners will complain. The general public will complain. Most days you will never serve enough people adequately in a way that keeps others happy. Or for every happy person there are several others who do not seem to be.

Don’t give up, you wonderful helper, you. Don’t give up.

You went into this work for a reason. Maybe you forgot why. Maybe the reason has changed. Find that reason. Hold that space. Breathe in. Breathe out.

You didn’t go into this because it was easy. Maybe you didn’t go into it because it was this hard. But you always knew this wouldn’t be easy. Our success will not be measured by how easy we made the work. It will be measured by what we achieved in difficulty.

Don’t give up, you wonderful helper, you. Don’t give up. You have epic shit to do.

Service Restrictions and Barring in Shelters

In congregate settings, like shelters and drop-in centers, there has to be some expectation of behaviour. One could argue that the larger the building or operation, the more important it is to have staff consistently apply expectations of behaviour. The good news is that most guests will be in compliance with the guidelines most of the time. The part that becomes difficult is what to do when people do not consistently meet the expectations of behaviour? This is where service restrictions and barring come into play.

While we talk plenty about trying to neutralize the power dynamics that exist between staff and guests, when it comes to meting out consequence of not meeting an expectation of behaviour, staff hold the power. Occasionally there are power hungry staff that abuse this power. Thankfully this too is rare. On the other hand, there are some staff who never want to hand out a service restriction. This too is rare.

In our work with transforming shelters to become more housing focused, one of the areas that needs to be tackled is service restrictions and barring. It is hard to house vulnerable people if you kick them out of services. Being lower barrier, which is a key to success for being housing-focused, requires a sober look at your existing expectations or rules and a revamping as necessary to help ensure staff are safe and guests are safe.

The starting point, therefore, in ensuring you have fair service restriction and barring policies is to review what the actual expectations and rules are, how they are communicated, and whose job it is (and how) to determine if a guest is not meeting those expectations. Here is an example of some guidelines developed by a large shelter we have been working with:

All guests of the shelter, both community and those accessing sleep programs are asked to adhere to a list of building guidelines.

1. All individuals are responsible for their personal belongings. The shelter is not responsible for any personal belongings.

2. To not have any unlabeled or mixed medication or medication belonging to someone else while a guest at the shelter.

3. To not buy/sell anything or collect debt while on the premises

4. To not participate in inappropriate intimacy on the premises

5. To not take any photo, video or audio recording while on the premises without administrative approval. This is to protect the privacy of everyone at the shelter

6. To not bring any weapons (real or replica) onto the property

7. To not vandalize any of the shelter property

8. For the safety of all guests the shelter requires all bags entering the building to be searched. Individuals may have bag searched by staff or they may opt to conduct a self-search.

It is far easier to explain 8 expectations at time of intake and have people understand what you are requesting of them than having 8 pages of rules that are quickly forgotten, ignored, or unequally applied.

Barring someone should always be a last choice when confronted with a complex behaviour situation. When an expectation is not being met, the first step should always be dialogue. The expectation that is not being met should be explained again. Once that (re)explanation is provided, an expectation should be set regarding what happens if the expectation is not met again in the future. Nonetheless, there will still be instances where a service restriction is necessary for the safety of the individual, others within the building, or the facility itself. 

When it gets to the point where a bar is going to be issued, it is important that these are clear and transparent to all guests, and applied consistently by all staff. Therefore, organizing types of service restrictions can be helpful, and keeping the number of categories small makes interpretation easier. Here is how one shelter transformed their barring infrastructure into four simple categories:

Category 4 - 3 months

• Violence requiring more than first aid medical attention

• Sexual Assault

• Arson

Category 3 - 14 days

• Property damage over $1000

• On-going drug trafficking

• On-going predatory behaviour

• Violence requiring first aid

Category 2 - 24-48 hours

Repeated breach of Category 1

Category 1 - 10 min-2 hour break from building

Breaches to the guidelines of the Emergency Shelter

Notice above that there is no such thing as an automatic lifetime ban. However, at the end of each bar period there can be a meeting between the guest and the shelter staff to assess where the person is at in wanting to meet the expectations moving forward. While in most instances the end of the bar duration is the end of the service restriction, there can be instances where there is no intention to meet the expectation and the bar is extended.

A shelter must also decide which staff under which circumstances can issue a service restriction. For example, Category 1 can be issued by any shelter employee, but a Category 4 restriction requires a Director level sign-off.  For shelters that have multiple staff on per shift, there may even be a process by which peer review goes into issuances of the likes of Category 2 or 3 issuances.

In the end, the service restriction process should not be punitive. It should be rehabilitative. It should support and help people meet an expectation over time.

Street Cleaning Does Not End Homelessness

This week, yet again, someone forwarded me an article about a new employment initiative for people that are homeless. Hold on to your hats, this employment initiative focused on street cleaning in the downtown of a major metropolitan area. Tell me whether you have heard of such a thing before. (As an aside, why does every community that does this think they are the first to think of it and that doing so will put an end to panhandling?)

A deficit orientation towards assisting people who are homeless or formerly homeless re-entering the labor force needs a critical re-think. Here are five big problems I have with initiatives like street cleaning done by people who are homeless:

1. Match people to jobs based upon strengths

Problem is – and here is a broad brush stroke argument – we don’t take time to learn what people are good at and match them to jobs and careers related to that match. We assume people who are/were homeless can only handle entry level menial jobs like street cleaning. For certain this is totally aligned to skills, aptitudes and interest of some, but far below the intellect, capabilities and desires of most.

2. “Practice jobs” do not guarantee or prepare people for “real jobs”

While the evidence is clear that supportive employment is the way to go for those with the most complex, chronic histories, we continue to use day labor and employment readiness schemes rather than lasting, sustainable employment. For those that claim that initiatives like street cleaning are the first step towards achieving this, I call bullshit. To me it is like saying transitional housing is necessary prior to having permanent housing.

3. It is housing first, not employment first

The key to success is housing first, not employment first. We should house people then focus on employment, not focusing on employment as a pathway to housing. Undoubtedly, a stable income source will be very important for ongoing housing stability. If that income is employed income, then even all the more reason to ensure the employment is sustainable.

4. An address (or lack of one) is a discriminatory job prerequisite

Homelessness should not be a job prerequisite. Homelessness should not be seen as a qualification. And just because one may spend a lot of time on the street, that does not make them qualified (or even interested) in cleaning a street. That’s like saying, “Iain spends a lot of time in airports therefore he would make a great air traffic controller.” It doesn’t work that way. On top of this is a vexing presupposition that it was people who are homeless who made the streets dirty, therefore they should clean them up.

5. This should be about social justice, not charity

We need to examine labor force participation through a lens of social justice, not charity. A number of these initiatives that do the likes of street cleaning do not pay a livable wage, may not even consider it real employment (providing people an honorarium or stipend rather than formal paid employment with tax deductions, etc.), and rarely if ever offer protections to injured workers. Let us also remember that these schemes are almost always created by non-homeless individuals who believe they are giving back and creating opportunities for people through this type of initiative when it is really their own self-interests that are being taken care of in the process.

Staff Change as the Shelter Changes

I have the pleasure of working on some large scale shelter transformations these days. It is easy to say you are becoming a housing-focused shelter and something different to put into practice. The ideas, concepts and techniques are transferable across jurisdictions. That said, we are noticing a distinct patter in the reactions of existing shelter staff as they work through the transition over several months.

The transformation of a shelter to become housing-focused is hardest to achieve with existing staff. Invariably, there are some people that self-select out of the organization. Then there are others who are genuinely curious and want to see how things unfold. Then there are others who have checked out, but stick around if you know what I am saying.

Huh?

In some shelters you’d swear that being housing-focused was a different language where they have no frame of reference of how to engage effectively with shelter guests. Staff were good at quick conversations, handing out towels, breaking up fights, and ensuring the AA meeting goes off without a hitch, but have no clue how to talk about housing applications, prioritization, listings, or security deposits.

I know everything.

Get one person housed and some staff act as though they should get a Congressional Medal of Honor (or Order of Canada). There are quick wins in becoming housing-focused. The danger, though, is taking a handful of low-hanging acuity, getting them housed quickly (because they probably could have done it themselves), and thinking everything will go that smoothly for everyone else thereafter. One of the tell-tale dangers of this phase – you’ll assess anything that moves thinking there is a magic answer behind every score. Assessment scores is not the knowledge you actually need.

There’s more to this than I thought.

Start becoming housing-focused in one part of a shelter operation and in no time you are over your head in all of the things that need to change to be effective. The two most transformative are rewriting shelter expectations to be housing-focused, and altering your service-restriction/trespassing/barring policy to align with a strength-based, housing-focused approach to service delivery. Be prepared for a bunch of staff to quit (or at least want to) at this juncture. And one of the other tell-tale signs of this phase – you won’t want to assess anybody because you see the bottleneck you have created and wonder what the point is of putting people on waiting lists. As change starts, so too does the disillusionment and lack of trust in the vision.

I’m never going to understand this.

Then the day comes when the lightbulb goes off and you start to realize that things like your approach to diversion and intake is directly related to your success in getting people to exit the shelter in a timely fashion. And you appreciate that the building needs some renovations to be more aligned to trauma-informed practice and a housing orientation. You will find yourself questioning very form and every field in HMIS. On top of that, you realize much of what you have been doing with shelter guests for years has been all the wrong things – and there is a career crisis. Plus, you have been looking at all of the wrong data and doing funding applications all wrong. Some long-time shelter guest at this point will remark that they miss the good ol’ days, and waxing nostalgic you probably think they are on to something.

It’s starting to make sense.

When housing-focused approaches start to click, there is consistency in higher acuity people accessing housing through or apart from coordinated entry. Shelter guests are staying for a shorter period of time and most of the conversations with shelter guests are about housing rather than day to day transactions. The new staff that are coming on board are eager to get on with housing as many people as possible. You likely find yourself quizzical and sometimes downright giddy when looking at your monthly housing statistics and how far you’ve come, being flummoxed but determined to house those people that have alluded you up to this point.

Trust me. It’s complicated.

By the time you reach this stage, if you are still around, you find yourself cringing every time your boss tells a story of one of the people housed through your shelter. It sounds like a sample size of one, and while you are happy that your boss is so excited about housing people, they seem to forget how hard it was to get to this place and how many staff were lost in the process. On top of this, a whole bunch of staff that were kicking and screaming along the way are now acting like the biggest cheerleaders for being housing-focused – the homeless service industry equivalent of Holden Caulfield’s phonies.

Three Aspects of Coordinated Entry

Many communities have worked hard on coordinated entry. This has been transformative in many communities. Side doors are closing. Access to housing with supports is becoming better defined. Priorities are being established at the community level. These are all good things.

But coordinated entry is just one part of the process. An important part, but not the whole picture. My fear is that so much effort has been placed upon entry that communities are creating and generating wait lists to nowhere. That is a problem.

So, when we think about designing and implementing coordinated entry, we must also think of two other aspects of the process: coordinated passage, and, coordinated exit.

Coordinated passage is the art and science of journeying with the individual or family to take care of all of the tasks that make housing possible. Paperwork. Documentation. Identification. Income supports and benefits. All of these require careful and skilled navigation and an eye to administrative accountability and necessity. Rarely are these linear, short in duration to attain, or easy. But if someone or some family is entering your system but is not navigated through the system, something is wrong. You will end up with a number of names of people you wish you were housing but cannot because their administrative tasks are incomplete.

Coordinated exit is the prize at the end of the coordinated passage. It is the acquisition of a place to live. Once people are “paper ready” there has to be results in moving from homelessness to housing. The measure of success of coordinated entry is not how many people are on a list or assessed, it is how many people actually move into housing. Without outflow, the entire system gets gummed up. Many communities we work with have come to realize that they don’t teach real estate in social work school. There can be a different set of skills necessary to get housing units available at scale, especially in expensive rental markets with low vacancy rates. Having the right staff with the right skills to find units to ensure coordinated exit is critical.

Reimagining Engagement and Roles for Volunteers and Donors During the Holiday Season

Since Giving Tuesday I imagine many of your organizations have been gladly accepting financial donations and the like. It is the time of year of giving, and for many non-profits, more money will come over in this stretch towards Christmas than any other time of the year. There will also be a seeming abundance of people wanting to volunteer or get involved in a toy drive or want to deliver Christmas hampers or serve Christmas dinner. Some of this may make sense to you; some of it will not. There is a madness to it all that repeats every single year that can seem overwhelming. And there are legitimate questions like, “Where is all this help the rest of the year?”

I think there is an opportunity to use the outpouring of engagement to strategically gather allies for those other times of the year when help is needed and to get more out of volunteers and donors than just their once a year giving. It requires time to plan, but the payoff is worth it. Here are five ideas you may consider doing:

1. Survey

We make assumptions about motivations and giving all the time. Create a survey – paper or a quick link to an electronic survey – that lets you gather insights into why they felt compelled to give or volunteer and what other opportunities they may consider in the future. You could have a great candidate for a board position or committee chair or organizer for future events in your midst.

2. Invite

Engagement is an opportunity for invitation. You may want some of the volunteers to commit to future meal planning and service, or you may have vacancies on committees that could be filled through volunteers. Or maybe you are planning a new capital campaign or service campaign where you want to invite people to either give or rally others to give. Plan specific invites that you can provide to people.

3. Create opportunity

Rather than just accepting that the holiday season will bring its rush of volunteers and donors, consider creating other types of engagement opportunities throughout the year for the same volunteers and donors to get involved. Christmas in July! End of school year party! Harvest festival! True, it may not be as catchy as people’s natural inclination to give during the more traditional holiday season, but with the right marketing and education, it can work.

4. Advocacy

Every volunteer is a potential advocate. Many just need information on how to advocate and to whom to advocate. Jane and John Doe volunteers, for example, would be happy to sign a petition or write a letter to an elected official about, say, affordable housing needs. They just require instruction on how to do it. Create allies in the work through their engagement in giving.

5. Educate

Many of the volunteers and givers you experience this holiday season will know very little or nothing at all about homelessness, especially the solutions to it. Their joy often comes because of the feeling of donating time or money. With the right education, they can become better versed in the issue, assist with advocacy, and feel the joy of reorienting their work towards solutions rather than just a charitable response. Education can take many forms, from sessions and presentations to brochures and informal engagement with the volunteers are involved. Don’t miss the opportunity.