on going chronicles of my life

I am SO sick right now, I can't even begin to describe it. I had to call in sick to work, which I've never done... in my life. It looks really bad too, because I just had the weekend off, and I have tomorrow off, and it was my birthday yesterday. Everyone probably thinks I was hung over, but I didn't even drink!

My city has this number where you can phone and talk to a nurse and then they'll help you decide if you should wait, see a doctor, go to the hospital or call an ambulance. I had a really good experience with them, so I decided I'd call again this morning.

On top of the flu symptoms, my neck is really sore, so she sent me off to ER at a trot. Don't drive yourself, get in right away, don't go to urgent care, hospital! So I called my pastor, who drove me over and hung out for a while wilst I felt sorry for myself and sick. All I wanted to do was LIE DOWN, and you can't do that. I've never been to a hospital before, except to pick up/drop off people. Then I'm there all the time.

After three hours (which is quite short all things considered) I saw the nurse practitioner for three minutes. I have the flu, and probably slept funny on my neck, and who knows why I was throwing up. In any case, I'm "fine" and I just need to take some gravol and some pain killers and try and sleep it off. Right now I'm trying to drink lots of fluids and take it easy. We'll see how it goes. At this moment I have no energy or motivation to do anything anyway. I'm not even bored, and I'm so sick I can't read.

I'm sure I'll be over it soon, but until then, yaaaaay for the awesome nurses and nurse practitioner who took time to calm me down while I was freaking out about meningitus. I cried the whole was through triage, but the nurse was really good. yay!

happy birthday to me :)

It's my birthday tomorrow, and best friend, with assistance from bestest bud, planned a surprise party for me in between street ministry and work. I have never had a surprise party before, and I was VERY surprised! Best friend was convinced I'd figured it out, and while she and some others were VERY weird at street ministry I was totally clueless. All I cared about was opening the giant box best friend left in my trunk. It had bright exciting wrapping paper! The box turned out to be dishes for my new place, I like them quite a lot. Of course it helps that we were window shopping together when I found them.

Street Ministry was fun. There was this super cute happy baby there. I love babies. It's one thing I miss about my first practicum. I don't really want to work with kids, but I love the babies! Especially the ones I can give back when they're freaking out!

Work was good too. Although it was sad leaving all my friends to party without me at my own party! Oh well, such is life. My schedule for the next three weeks looks good. I have full time hours and although they're spread between evenings and nights, it's all good. They rotate the proper way, and I really did want to get the hours. While I am purging, there are some things I need for my new apartment(toaster, coffee maker, vacum, pots and pans, ironing board, blender) and I'd like to be able to afford them! Once I'm settled going down to four shifts a week (or even 3.5 as in 3 one week, 4 the next) would be fine, but right now, I'll take the full time. And besides, what else to I have to do (let us not speak of my job at the church).

Warehousing the homeless part four

Can you believe I found this photo when I googled "transitional housing"? Oh well, google image search isn't perfect! Looks more like jail to me. Or I dunno...in jail you don't have quite so many roommates!

Anyway, when I was talking to mr. nice guy about the staff evaluations I also told him about how we need some structured wet housing. He was totally on board with me, which was really nice. I first brought up the fact that we really need someone whose role is to try and encourage and help people to find housing. Some might argue that this process needs to be initiated for the client, but I think for some people, they've just lost hope that it's even possible. They need a boost, and a reminder that there's help and hope before they are able to begin to grasp the possibility.

Then we talked about how valuable it is to be able to have a sense of ownership of something. To be able to have anything, even just a little space, to call your own. I place where you can store a couple things, where you can do your laundry and know that you're not saying goodbye to those clothes forever. Where it's possible to own more then one set of clothes! He agrees with me, that having a safe place to stay that's "yours" is a very, very good start.

Our detox unit might be moving, and I want to turn to the existing space into wet housing, instead of making the shelter bigger. I'm not sure exactly how that would work, but eventually (this is a long term moving plan here), I will put something in writing to our executive director, because I think it's an awesome idea, and having a place like that on site would make it quite comfortable for the clients who were likely to use it. I mean, there's a million things that would have to be considered, but, I just keep talking to people and getting them to open their minds to the possibilities.

sexual harassment and me...sigh

I'm mad enough right now that I'm going to post a fairly real story. As usual, details and stuff have been changed, but really, I don't know how I could even begin to make this up. Did you now I have "buffalo breasts"? Because I didn't!

So I have this IDPA. He's crazy. And by that, I mean he's intoxicated and has a severe and persistent mental illness. I'm not one to use the word crazy, but in this instance, it seemed fitting. The police who gave him to me apologized for doing so. I said, oh, I'm sure it'll be fine, little did I know.

Stuck him in a cameraed cell...mistake (or well, actually a good thing). Guy gets naked and starts masturbating. Guy is very harassing towards me when I'm doing checks, but whatever, I'm ignoring him for the most part. This guy is very creative when it comes to finding ways to please himself, which is hard when all you have is a mat. I am trying very hard not to watch, but when he's not busy with himself, he's doing stuff like throwing himself against cement walls at high speed or shreding his mat into tiny pieces.

I have never been talked to the way this guy talked to me. Asking me to come "suck his dick" and offering me sex even though I'm "ugly". I won't get into it, but it was incredibely vulgar, and I had no choice but to ignore it, or argue, and I don't argue with intoxicated people. My supervisor came and told him to put "it" away and all he said was "isn't it big". So fine. I'm busy ignoring him. Then the police come to drop off another IPDA, and this, is why I'm mad. And, I don't have to protect their privacy, only my IPDA's.

So anyway, one of the cops sees my IPDA who by now has semen all over his cell and window. Cop tells IPDA that I'm at the front laughing at him masturbating for the camera (yes, he was totally thinking of me, and looking right at the camera). So then the police officer comes over, around the counter to my side, and tells me what he told the IPDA (i couldn't hear because it was the other end). Then he says "so are you watching" I said "no, actually I'm trying not to, he's been harassing me all night". Then the officer says "I so caught you, you like it, I know you liked it, I'm just going to go tell him how much you like it", and then he takes off down the hall, again, I couldn't hear what he said. There was more to the conversation, but yeah. The freaking cops are egging the guy on, and harassing me. BAH!

So, I talked to my supervisor, who got me to file an incident report. Talked with my boss this morning, who's never dealt with this before, but is glad I reported it and is going to talk to our executive director about it... he also lost the incident report in the 24 hours between me reading it and talking to him... i should have photocopied it... oops. I hope he finds it, because it has the best description of the incident. Also the car number of jerk face. Sigh. We'll see what happens, hopefully something. I mean, i'm not a big whiner, and I can deal with intoxicated people being jerks, but the police, they're supposed to be professionals.

what if the clients did the performance evaluations part two!

Two nights ago I had a long talk with mr. nice guy about the clients doing performance evaluations. He was busy making a list of things he thinks need improving and trying to get some ideas on paper, and when he asked for my ideas I was totally ready to give him some!

He agrees with me, which was nice, because it means someone else in the organization is thinking the way I do and I'm not crazy. Unfortunately, he realizes the same struggles that I do with making it all work...I was hoping he'd have the answers! We talked about how empowering it is to say to the "your feedback matters", "we care about what you think". We talked about the fact that when we treat the clients as if they matter and have opinions then they are more likely to treat us as if we matter and have opinions (ie respect us). If treat the clients like animals, or consumers using up free services, then it only makes sense that they are going to "behave like animals".

We talked about the fact that realistically we don't get performance evaluations at all. He's been there five years and thinks he might have had 1. I'm not expecting any. That of course is the first challenge towards getting things in place. The second challenge though, which is a big one, is literacy and the fact that many of our clients don't read and write. That means to administer something like this it has to be verbal, so who does that... management? I mean, I guess, but are the clients really going to talk to them? Who would the clients talk to? It's hard to know. An anonymous suggestion box would work for those who are literate, I mean, we'd get spam as well, but who doesn't. It also isn't quite as targeted. Although, how do you get targeted feedback.

In any case, mr. nice guy wrote it on his list, and so now there are two of us thinking about it and possibly more. We'll see what happens. It something I'm not going to forget about, and will keep advocating for whenever I have the chance.

what if the clients did the performance evaluations

My random thought of the day, was that clients really should have a way to evaluate us. The detox clients do in a way, they get to evaluate "staff" on their evaluation forms, but that's it. I really wish that clients had a good way to give constructive feedback.

For example, more than one client has complained to me about a particular staff member's attitude towards them. I happen to be on the side of the clients on this one, as I've seen the behaviour in action. However, all I can do is direct them to talk to management. There's no way for me to document this, I asked, and there's no easy way for them to record it either. Management is fine and all, but they're not necessarily the easiest people to talk to.

I was thinking that some random client evaluations given to clients by management and then compiled by management so they were anonymous might be good for us. I mean in some ways I can gage how my clients feel about me, but in other ways I can't. When I was in therapy I got to evaluate my therapist. When I was in school I got to evaluate my professors. How come my clients don't get to evaluate me?

HIV and Crack Use

I found myself nodding in agreement with this study this morning. It talks about the fact that people, especially women who are HIV+ and use crack don't get nearly as much treatment as those HIV+ who are not using crack. In my experience I've found this to be very true.

People come into IPDA all the time who are HIV+. It doesn't phase me. What surprises me, is how few of them are taking any medication. There are life saving medications out there which can extend life for an indefinite period of time, and these people aren't taking them. There are of course many reasons for this, and I don't begin to blame the health care profession. It is however something to be aware of.

The article states, and again, in my experience I've found this to be true, that this population also tends to have a lot of unprotected sex, especially the women. I find it hard knowing women who are HIV+ and are working the streets. Or men, having encounters with those women.

Actually to be honest, I haven't met a single HIV+ person among the homeless population who is taking antiretrovirals. That doesn't mean there aren't, because I'm sure there are, I just haven't come across them in detox or IPDA.

The article suggests better services for this population. I wonder what that would look like...

Lazy Sunday

I'm having an awesome lazy Sunday. Or well, I suppose it's not so much lazy as just very pressure free. I don't work tonight, so I have no agenda - well, i want to stay up late, but that's not the point...

Church went really well this morning. I still wasn't convinced my sermon was all there, but it was definitely better then last week. It also felt a lot better only working 8 hours before church as opposed to 16.

Tonight, when I'm trying to stay up all night even though I'm not at work, I'm going to work on packing, but for now, I'm relaxing. I had a good nap this afternoon, not waking up till roommate got home from work. I'll probably go back to sleep for a while in a couple hours... we'll see. I still have to work on figuring out this whole staying awake all night when not working thing. Cause I really feel like I'll need to do that. Not sure how I can maintain a schedule if I don't.

Work was not exciting yesterday. There was nothing wrong with it, just nothing out of the ordinary. Had another experience where I released people from IPDA who seemed totally sober and nice and then were jerks when they got out. Also had a woman trying to make love to her cell door...

yay

So after not hearing from the rental agency for over a week, I finally decided to call them yesterday. After a rather annoying computerized directory, I got a receptionist who transferred me to an answering machine. I left a message, they called me back, and I GOT IT! Yay! No more apartment looking. And, it's only four buildings away from the building I live in now!!!

money on the streets

I'm on permanent nights now. It's awesome. I'm really rather pleased with the entire situation. I like the clients, the staff, the time, the work. Yay!

Last night was a normal CRAZY night in the life of IPDA. Intoxicated Person must be Detained under the Act far more often on weekends, after payday, when welfare cheques have come out! At one point I had five, count them, five police cars lined up outside the building. I was SO not impressed. It was beyond annoying. But, I got through it. My supervisor did all my paper work, which just made everything go better, and I concentrated on doing the actual intakes and discharges so we never had to shut down for more then 20 minutes. One of my coworkers helped with the cleaning and checks, and yeah, it went really well. My philosophy is sort of like this. I can't work any faster then I can work, and the only thing that will sober people up is time, so sometimes, the police are just going to have to WAIT. I made some of them popcorn. That seemed to help.

This was again raises the question for me though. Why do I love my job?