I had a real Liz Lemon day at work today. I embarrassed myself, said the wrong thing to someone my company really needs to impress, and my office mate really takes a lot of joy in making fun of the way I talk.
January 28 2012
At The Lighthouse we are working on a partnership with Saskatoon Mental Health & Addictions to have 8 long-term suites available to them for their hard to house clients with 1 room being a respite room for shorter stays. Currently we are renovating them and by May they should be ready.
It is my job to work with SMHA to decide criteria for the clients we are going to serve, staffing levels, and general protocol. The best thing about this is that we, as staff, have much more access to mental health nurses who we can bounce ideas off of and share client issues with them.
SMHA also wants to know more about who the people are who live at the Lighthouse, and the past week I have gone through everyone’s files to figure out if they have a diagnosis and who their supports are. (We have our clients permission to share this information to health care professionals.)
Some of the files are very slim at the Lighthouse. We only know what clients disclose to us, and when they first fill out their application form many are very reluctant to share much. Because they are in a desperate housing situation, they think what they disclose may cause us not to house them. (The vacancy rate in Saskatoon in less than 3% and Mental Health group homes are completely full.)
I am not trained in Mental Health. I write down what is in their files. Some I add too. The ones who I list as ‘undiagnosed’ are probably our toughest cases. I don’t know what to write about a client now my age who was locked in the basement till they was 8, or one client who just stares catatonically out the window for hours at a time.
In March I am going to get some more Mental Health training, starting with ASIST which stands for something like Applied Suicide Intervention Training (I forget what the second S is for). This job is stretching me in such different ways that I never could have predicted but I get to use all sorts of talents and skills and acquire new ones.
January 26 2012
January 24 2012
—N.T. WrightOf course, whenever people discover that other folk are going out of their way to give handouts, some will get lazy and simply try to trade off this goodwill. It’s a telling point, actually, that this was already a danger in the very early church – because you only get that problem arising if the church is being generous. The line between ‘deserving poor’ and ‘undeserving poor’ is very, very hard to draw, and one of the things about poverty, whether one has work or not (some jobs pay so little that the people who do them are still well within the poverty trap), is that it is depressing, and actually saps the energy and nerve and vitality in ways that people like me, who have never been out of work and never been truly poor, can only appreciate by being with and ministering to people who are genuinely and chronically poor. There is a real danger that in a go-getting country like the USA those who have initiative, energy, advantages of birth and education, can easily look down on those who have none of those things. It simply isn’t the case that every human starts at the same level point so that the rich are those who’ve worked for it and the poor are those who couldn’t be bothered. Throughout the Bible God seems to take special note of those trapped in poverty, and we should do the same.
January 22 2012
January 17 2012
— - George Elliot, “The Mill on the Floss”It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable, when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us, that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory.
Congressman who authored bill requiring drug tests for welfare recipients arrested for DUI
From HuffPo:
Kip Smith, a Republican state congressman from Georgia and sponsor of a bill that would have submitted all welfare recipients to random drug testing, was arrested Friday night for driving under the influence of alcohol.
(Source: producermatthew)
Via Producer Matthew
January 16 2012
January 14 2012
January 12 2012
January 11 2012
January 09 2012
Hunt for a Serial Killer Sends Homeless to Shelters in California - NYTimes.com
Skittish even at the best of times, homeless people in Orange County have been running to shelters this week in search of a safe place to sleep after the separate stabbing deaths of three homeless men. The authorities believe there is a serial killer stalking the homeless.Demand for beds at some shelters was up as much as 40 percent in the last couple of days, while other shelters have been inundated with calls from frightened homeless people wondering if the killer has been caught, whom he is targeting and where they can go.
(Source: abbyjean)
Via think on this.
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