In Service to Your Community: A Field Survival Guide for Community-Based Services Professionals

By Janet Hume Cox M.Ed.

In Service to Your Community is a sometimes tongue-in-cheek informative guide to assist new and veteran staff with their on-the-job training in basically any setting providing community-based services. It is designed to appeal to a wide range of adult learners.

In Service to Your Community has two purposes: (1) to provide information to front-line community mental health workers to increase their competency and (2) to decrease staff turnover, which can lead to higher quality outcomes, making the agency more desirable to stakeholders.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796041606

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Copyright © 2019 by JANET HUME COX, M.ED..

ISBN:       Softcover                       978-1-7960-4161-3

                 eBook                            978-1-7960-4160-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 10/02/2019

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Acknowledgments

My deepest thanks and gratitude go to Joe Anthony, Germaine O’Connell, Alex Aranda, and Jennifer Roberts, LPC, LPCS for muddling through my first drafts and giving me terrific, thoughtful feedback, Deborah Ostrander, Sharon Clemmons Thomas and Joan Bowers, LMFT for their endless support and encouragement, and Cynthia Cupit Swenson, Ph.D. for believing in me and giving me my first publishing opportunity.

I am also very thankful for all my coworkers and clients throughout the years with whom I shared the ups, downs, disasters, and thrills that all come with being a community-based services professional. A little piece of each of you will be with me for the rest of my life and I hope I left a little piece of me, with you.

And last, but not least, I want to thank my parents, Otis and Irene Hume for the way I was raised. We don’t get to pick the family that we are born into. I am grateful that I was born into theirs.

In Service to Your Community

In Service to Your Community is a sometimes tongue-in-cheek, informative guide to assist new and veteran staff with their on-the-job training in basically any setting providing community-based services. It is designed to appeal to a wide range of adult learners.

In Service to Your Community has two purposes: (1) to provide information to front-line community mental health workers to increase their competency and (2) to decrease staff turnover, which can lead to higher quality outcomes, making the agency more desirable to stakeholders.

The Author

Masters of Education (M.Ed.) in Community Counseling, The Citadel, Charleston, SC Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Correctional Services, Eastern KY University, Richmond, KY

Over 25 years, I provided services to clients with family violence issues and with youth in out-of-home placements and/or directed their family reunification. The majority of these clients were involved with child protective services, the community mental health centers, and/or the legal system. I worked with both victims and perpetrators of child abuse and domestic violence, as well as serving as adjunct professor, teaching Case Management to a wide variety of adult learners.

The information contained here-in is a sample of lessons that I had to learn the hard way – by the seat of my pants. And I’m hoping that this handbook will help others be more prepared for the challenges that await them as community mental health professionals. Whether you are a youth worker or a therapist or you provide outreach services, you can benefit from the information shared in In Service to Your Community.

And though I am certain that this manual can be useful to individuals continuing their education on their own, clinical supervision in the use of In Service to Your Community is highly recommended to achieve optimal results.

Thank you for your interest.

Janet Hume Cox

You affect people by what you are, no matter where you are.

If they never see you

and yet you are good and working for them, you’re going to affect them.

Author Unknown

Introduction

I n Se rvice to Your Community is a handbook designed to assist entry- level employees of community-based social service agencies with their training and its purpose is two-fold: The first is to provide information to community mental health workers that will better prepare them for the difficulties of becoming intimately involved in other people’s lives. Most in these careers would agree that turnover in this field is very high and part of the reason is that people are ill-prepared for the intensity and ferocity that accompanies working with people in crisis. And people caught up in a social services system are usually in crisis. The sharing of information is paramount to decreasing turnover, which can range from 30 – 90% depending on what part of the nation you reside in.

This manual cannot stand alone, however; it is not meant to replace orientation or the crucial on-the-job (OTJ) training supplied by your agency. This handbook is to be used as a supplement to on-site training because each and every organization is a little bit different in the way they do things, in their policies, and in their expectations of front-line staff. In Service to Your Community should always be used in conjunction with and under the direct supervision of your immediate supervisor and any other professionals up the chain of command. And though it cannot address everything you may encounter, I truly believe the information contained within will benefit you. No one person has all the answers; In Service to Your Community is but one tool you can count on to help you assist your clients in achieving their highest level of functioning and emotional wellness.

If you are working in the field of abuse in families, many of the people you work with will have issues covered in this handbook. Choose your topics, your issues to address with your clients wisely; more than likely, your time together will be limited. You have embarked on an awesome career, one that will be packed with people contact and all that relationship- building and -maintaining, require. You feel compelled to follow your instinct, your heart, your dream. That’s good – compelled is an important factor in being successful in this type of work. Either your family is proud and supportive of your chosen line of work or they are embarrassed and disappointed that you would settle for a lifetime of making less money than your potential warrants and that you so richly deserve. A career in community mental health (and I use this term very broadly) is one that will be filled with intimate connections with others, often during the worst times of their lives.

As you know, however, during a crisis, during the hard times, the consistent, dependable presence of someone who is an excellent listener, who has the knowledge and the skills to help us process events and feelings until they make some sort of sense, and who can help us get unstuck, makes even the worst of times more tolerable and, sometimes even growth-producing, for the client and the helper.

Again, please remember to utilize supervision within your agency and check out your plan for service delivery, often, with your supervisor or assigned mentor. In any setting, your supervisor is going to have the last word regarding whether or not your ideas, your plan, can come to fruition within your agency’s guidelines. Do your homework and learn from those around you. Use In Service to Your Community to supplement your educational foundation for information on some people issues, and for information regarding documentation and making good use of your time. Use these examples as guidelines; your job may require different specifics.

As I said before, this book came to fruition in an attempt to reduce the amount of turnover in this field. As you probably already know, too, a career in a community-based mental health agency or group home setting is not going to pay all that well. Funds for salaries are limited; often, grant money runs dry or state agencies cut their budgets. Monies set aside specifically for training are also limited. Too often, first time employees of service organizations (whether they are non-profit or government or even private for-profit) are literally thrown to the wolves receiving little or no training on HOW to do their jobs. Though it would be helpful to the new employee and to the clients, 1:1 (one-to-one) shadowing in any of these positions is rare.

Most agency funds are so limited, they cannot hire a replacement worker until the previous one has already left.

Specific formal educational requirements are common and are a must. Formal education provides a necessary foundation that is paramount to learning these types of jobs. Education, however, does not come cheap and paying off school loans can put a strain on one’s budget. Also, despite the strength of this foundation, our formal education cannot cover everything we need to know. Learning is a life-long endeavor – we cannot stay in school indefinitely.

Caseloads are often very high, as well, making it impractical or impossible for experienced employees or supervisors to take very much time out of their own busy schedules to show a new person the ropes. Frustration with having to learn by the seat of your pants, I believe, is a major cause of burnout and frequent turnover. It has been my experience over the past 25 years, that very few beginning mental health professionals receive adequate training for their jobs. Job descriptions can be pretty specific about what the job is; information on HOW to do that job, however, is not necessarily readily available. Too much trial and error results in high levels of frustration for the workers and for the clients and will minimize the effectiveness of the treatment you try so diligently to provide. Having a strong desire to do a good job and really help people often takes a back seat to the struggles, the frustrations, and the anxiety that comes with figuring out HOW to do a good job when there’s so much at stake.

In Service to Your Community is designed to help you through those anxious moments – on your own, face to face with a client who needs you to help him get himself together or with facing down the Mt. McKinley of paperwork piled up on your desk. Eventually, you will develop your own style within your agency’s parameters. You, just like the client, are your own person, a unique individual with individual strengths and challenges. Just know that you have to work at figuring it out. Bad habits can develop quickly when a person is feeling overwhelmed. Consciously develop good habits because good habits will help you get through the tough times.

Genuineness is especially important in the human-services field. When you are working with people who have difficulty trusting others, it is important that you are genuinely interested in their well-being and are trustworthy and patient. It’s also important to be confident in your abilities and to be yourself.

The chapters that follow will provide you with some basic tools to get you started on this exciting path. The first section will focus on YOU – the community-services professional – who you are as a person, what your expectations are and how you can take care of yourself while being in the midst of your clients’ often-chaotic lives. The second section of In Service to Your Community will address some of the more challenging job-related issues - Documentation and Time Management, while the