I’m a consultant.  So a lot of what I do and say comes from the comfort of the sidelines.  I watch things.  I analyze.  I suggest.  But I’m rarely in the line of fire.

The past several months I’ve watched a friend (and a client by the way) stand squarely in the line of fire.  I’m talking about John Chianelli, until yesterday, the administrator of Milwaukee County’s Behavioral Health Division.  I’ve worked with John for many years - in the Continuum of Care (Milwaukee’s homeless coalition, on the reform of GAMP (General Assistance Medical Program – now known as BadgerCare Core), and in facilitating strategic planning sessions for the leadership team at BHD and assisting in the effort to integrate the AODA and mental health treatment systems into a more coherent, welcoming system for everyone.

I’m proud of the work I’ve done and proud of my association with John Chianelli.  He’s a gifted public administrator – talented, committed, energetic.  This recent situation is a tragedy all round.

Anyway, despite my great respect for John and the work BHD has done to reform itself, I am really troubled by how they’ve handled this crisis.  They stonewalled.  Something very bad happened on their watch and they battoned down the hatches and went mum. 

BHD runs a public psychiatric hospital.  This is a challenging job with a lot of potential for error – especially when resources are scarce.  It’s not as if the public might not understand that a mistake happened.  Mistakes happen in this hard world.  But maybe on the advice of lawyers, maybe on their own counsel, BHD slammed the door shut.  No one called a press conference.  No one came out with the facts of the story.  No one said they were sorry.

This last element is the sticking point for me.  When little Christopher Thomas was killed at the hands of his kinship caretaker, the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare dummied up, looked at us (the public) stonefaced as if they had nothing to explain and nothing to apologize for.  I’m not afraid to admit it – Christopher Thomas’ death made me weep.  It also moved me to become a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) to stick up for a kid in foster care.  But back to BHD.

What I wanted to hear from Milwaukee County was an apology along with an acknowledgement that something went terribly wrong and needed to be fixed. 

BP figured this out too late — taking the advice of their lawyers until the entire world condemned their rotten behavior in the Gulf before and after the spill.  Same with Toyota.  Stonewall.  Denial.  Silence.  And then the avalanche of criticism and hatred.  The New York Times’ recent article, “In Case of Emergency:  What Not to Do,” lays it all out.  When there’s a catastrophe, disclose it immediately.  Come clean.  Be clear on what will be done to avoid a recurrence.  Own up.

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/in-case-of-emergency-what-not-to-do/

It’s not just strategy — gee, if BHD had done the Tylenol thing, it would all be ok — it’s also about public accountability and transparency.  And being and feeling sorry when something bad happens.  And meaning it.  I wish BHD administrators had done that — so they could enlist the public in their efforts to reform the mental health system instead of fueling the years’ old fires of suspicion and conflict.  Sad thing.  But bigger sad than just a couple of people — sad for all of us as a town.

There are things I’ve done to facilitate group discussions that, in retrospect, make me roll my eyes and yearn for witness protection.  Even more astonishing than the cockamamie things I asked people to do is the fact that 99.9% of the time, people would do them!

Without flinching,

• The head of UMOS agreed to write a ‘pressing community need’ on a balloon and tack it to the wall to be popped later by the expert facilitator as we established need priorities.
• Waukesha County’s budget director along with his key staff wrote their ‘most important outcomes’ on paper airplanes and sailed them at me and my co-facilitator in a flurry which had us scrambling around the floor trying to pick them up and read them.  (We planned pre-flight but not post-flight.)
• A police chief used crayons to draw his favorite summertime memory as a boy which had him on his bike in the hills overlooking his town and then label the picture “Lucky.”  (This was actually one that worked pretty well – helping a new Youth Collaborative harken back to the golden days of freedom and playfullness of their youth.  Unfortunately, they then went on to plan more structured activities for kids.  Oh well.)
• Emergency shelter directors constructed their ‘visions’ of how the Shelter Task Force should operate using (what else?) Tinkertoys.  (Didn’t work – they all looked like spaceships.)

In addition to this kind of stuff, I went through a period of taking little jars of Play-Doh to every meeting.  I probably have more Play-Doh in my office right this second that Milwaukee’s biggest day care — because, you know or maybe you don’t, that you really can’t use Play-Doh twice.  Has to be new.

Anyway, participants in a planning meeting will generally do whatever the facilitator asks them to do if the facilitator conveys a genuine commitment to the process and a real enthusiasm for the results.  If the facilitator equivocates, then people will hang back.  I witnessed someone at a large gathering not so long ago open the meeting by promising a great icebreaker and then, surprisingly, losing his nerve at the last minute.  If you’re going to do something different, you have to plunge in like you believe it. 

Now I pretty much stick with the simple and striking.  Like this ball.  This is possibly the most enticing ball on the planet.  So I use it to do introductions or I’ll just have it sitting on the table available for people to  pick up and fiddle with.  People like it that I thought to bring some toys; most people will get into it.  It helps them play while being serious.  Takes the edge off.  Gives them something to laugh about.  Makes the room warmer and happier. 

Sometimes, though, people gather to plan or discuss or strategize and they are just too up tight to pick up that ball.  The ball will sit there the entire session.  Like it was made of crystal.  Everyone is afraid of the ball, ignores it, looks at their hands.  When that happens, witness protection is looking better and better.

There’s a big risk I will start sounding like Lewis Black in this post.  I have had it up to here with ho-hum service providers who haven’t felt a sense of urgency since the last time they stood in a slow fast food lane.

It’s one thing when the waiting customers are adults.  Another matter altogether when we’re talking about children.  Because children – you see – live in a different time dimension, sort of like dogs.  Every hour is a day, every day is a month – waiting ticks away on a bigger clock for kids.  At the same time kids’ brains are developing at warp speed and their emotions are careening around street lights and space shuttles, adults are yawning their way through the 3 hour process necessary to schedule the next meeting in six months.

And kids?  They don’t really complain about it.  They don’t know too much about consumer hotlines and ombudsman programs.  They show up where the adults take them.  And use the only tools they have to make themselves heard including silence, ‘acting out’, and taking off, if they’re older.  They don’t know what they need and they don’t get it about taking a number.  They are told to rely on adults to figure it out but the adults have a lot of other pressing matters like referral forms and reports and collaborative team meetings.

The cynical part of me thinks that this dull, uninspired, limp culture is part and parcel of the for-profit helping industry whose interests are better served by kids staying a mess rather than getting healthy.  Maybe I’m wrong — everyone’s really super committed but it’s just hard to move quickly and affirmatively.  Sure.

Maybe it’ll all work out.  I just have to be patient.

This week someone thought they had to explain to me that ‘kickin’ it’ meant hanging out.  Thanks.  Gee, I thought people were actually going out back and kicking something.  Each other?  A ball?  Please.

One thing I know about — is ‘kickin’ it.’  Chillaxin’ – I’m pretty good at that, too. I’m also not bad at hangin’ loose (when I’m not hangin’ tight) and just plain chillin’. 

I got my start early.

In a real inner tube.

From a tractor.

So there.

This picture has absolutely nothing to do with this post.  You see, the post was going to be about gardening – about how some people are good gardeners because they can commit to consistent effort and other people are, well, like me.  But I write about what I’m thinking about and what I’m thinking about is race.

So.  Cultural competence.  Does it go both ways?  If I am the only white person in a training program or a job or a school, do people worry about dealing with me in a culturally competent way?  And if they did (worry, that is), what would that mean?  What would be done differently?  In what ways would people take my white origins into account and how would they, or would they, modify their language or behavior? Can a white person wonder if something is culturally competent for him or herself?  Does the concept have validity for a white person in an African American world, say?

Of course, the issue of cultural competence is very difficult, made more complex by institutional racism and the pervasiveness and persistence of white privilege.  Thinking historically, it would be nonsensical to assume that the need for cultural competence runs both ways for that very reason — the embeddedness of racism in American society.  But what about in in a day to day sense, in the sense of a white teenager, who because of a variety of factors, is plucked from her family in a white environment and placed in an African American home, school, and neighborhood? 

Is it safe to assume that this kid will be well-received and that any feelings of fear or apartness or differentness will be quickly abated by people’s kindness?  That’s what I’m hoping.  And that years from now when she recounts the experience she had living in the African American community, it will be with pride and fond memories.  I want to believe that she won’t feel judged or marginalized and that her entire cultural identity won’t be comprised of stereotypes about white people.

I don’t have any answers and I’m not judging anybody.  I’m just wondering, that’s all – mostly because I know this kid and really care about her, but also because I think it’s an interesting and challenging set of questions to ponder.

And the picture?  It’s the product of one of the two days a year that I garden.  Day one is when I go to Stein’s and buy a bunch of plants.  Day two is when I find the machete and clear out the garden on the side of our house which looks spectacular at the moment…..although I have notoriously low standards in this field of endeavor.

A project is a thing of beauty in your mind’s eye.  It’s the implementation of it that’s the bear.  Yesterday’s project was repainting our sauna.   It looks like a little house – about 9′ by 15′ with a peak that you need an extension ladder to reach. 

The project started out hopeful and cheery like most projects do.  Using red paint helped.  Looks new.  Going fast.  Lots of jokes between me and my painting partner.  This is great – we’re going to be out of here in an hour. 

Dry wood sucking up paint like crazy.  Very hot sun and hotter wind that blows the paint off our brushes on to our arms.  Weeds in the way.  And so are the remnants of a Northwest Indian tribe totem pole which fell over in a Lake Superior storm about ten years ago. (Is this an odd story yet?)

Anyway, so we’re getting tired and very hot.  Painting partner sees a little hornet’s nest.  Good reason to skip the two slats right below.  First shortcut.  Last side has the weeds and the totem which of course we shouldn’t move out of respect to its what? imminent total deterioration? Second shortcut.

Now at least one of us is nearing heat stroke.  Spectator saunters over and suggests we just paint the bare spots.  “That’s crazy.  It’ll look like polka dots.”  The sauna was already red, so I actually considered that option. The two of us are now slapping paint on the last side wherever we can reach and starting a little chorus of “nobody’s going to see this side anyway.”  Which is perilously close to a really defeated “who gives a crap, haven’t we worked hard enough, the rest of it looks ok, let’s just bag it.”

And I realize that this surrender to good enough happens a lot when two people are working together.  It’s like cutting class — it’s contagious.  What the heck?  We could be drinking a beer and admiring the front of this damn sauna – where it actually looks pretty good.  If one person isn’t a high quality hardliner, two people will talk themselves into doing just enough to get by. 

Does it matter?  Sometimes.  Not everything needs to be perfect.  But some things do.

Still.  Sauna looks pretty good.  Don’t you think?

Jan Wilberg Janice Wilberg

For years, I’ve complained about human services agencies with locked front doors.  Agencies that require you to push the little doorbell, then talk to the receptionist, then get buzzed in, and then sign in.  One agency I frequent even asks me to include my license plate # on the sign-in sheet.  When they let me in, it’s not clear what criteria I met or failed to meet.  Did I not look dangerous?  Did they assume I didn’t have a cute pink pearl-handled revolver in my big Coach bag (like I even know what a revolver is….although, happily, I do know what a Coach bag is).  So agencies are worried about security — after 9/11, everyone got intense about security so I always attributed it to that and shrugged, oh well.

A dear colleague of mine, Ramon Wagner, had a completely different approach.  He talked all the time about front porches and how agencies had to sit on their front porches (figuratively) to understand the world and their place in it.  He didn’t believe in locked doors and, to this day, Community Advocates, the agency he founded, is a walk-in place. Stop in any day and you will see dozens of people in the waiting room who just walked in looking for help.  This is more than just not having a locked door.  Community Advocates, probably without knowing it, was on the cutting edge of a new way of thinking about human services than can be summed up in the word welcoming.

For the past few months, I’ve been assisting the Community Services Branch of the Behavioral Health Division in its efforts to establish a Comprehensive Continuous Integrated System of Care.  Fundamentally, this is about integrated substance abuse and mental health treatment services but, to me, the overarching value in the approach is the concept of welcoming.  Drs. Minkoff and Cline, the primary consultants to Milwaukee County on this effort, explain this concept in an article “Developing Welcoming Systems for Individuals with Co-Occurring Disorders: The Role of the Comprehensive Continues Integrated System of Care Model,” found at http://www.kenminkoff.com/articles/dualdx2004-1-devwelcomingsys.pdf.

Welcoming is about not having a locked door to anything.  At least as I understand it so far, it means that a troubled person presenting him or herself for help is welcomed, helped and respected.  “You’re in the right place.  We’re glad to see you.”  That’s the message.  Even if a person ends up needing to go to another program with more expertise or somehow can’t qualify for what’s available on-site, the message remains – “it’s good that you’ve decided to seek help and we will help you find it.”  This isn’t just at the front door but throughout an organization.

When people are sick and down, when they feel they’ve lost everything and have no choice but to ask for help, they don’t need locked doors and stern looks.  They need ackknowledgement, a smile, and maybe a nice cup of coffee.  In short, they need to be welcomed.

Jan Wilberg Janice Wilberg

I’m not saying sexism is dead, but it’s been a long time since I walked into a meeting feeling apologetic because I didn’t bring the coffee pot.  This is a bit embarrassing but I actually had a secretarial job once that included not only making the coffee but having a hot cuppa joe in my hand as the boss walked by into his office.  This came after the job where I typed the exact same letter (I’m talking typed here, folks, as in the key hitting the paper and having to erase same if said key was the wrong one) for eight hours a day for two straight weeks so the coffee making/handing thing seemed like a small price to pay to get free of that damn letter.

Remember how Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said he couldn’t define pornography but he knew it when he saw it?  Once you get past the obvious like huge disparities in pay and opportunity, that’s what sexism is.  It’s a bad electricity a woman feels the minute she walks in a room.

It’s something I can feel in an instant but can’t explain or define.  It’s the feeling of being tolerated, considered to be taking up space, not possibly being able to contribute, regarded as fundamentally nonessential.  It brings on a visceral, angry, fear-like feeling that dips really fast into believing that maybe some of that disregarding, dismissive attitude might be warranted.  The sickening thing about any ism is how quickly its victims absorb its judgement.

I’ve often told people that I decided to get a Ph.D. so people would listen to me in meetings.  Sounds flippant, but it was actually my driving force.  I wanted to be taken seriously – I figured the extra letters would help.  It did.  But hard to tell if the Ph.D. lessened the extent to which I absorbed others’ sexist attitudes or whether the degree changed other people’s attitudes toward me.    Chicken-egg.  All I know is the degree coupled with the fact that I now look like everyone’s mother has really made my recent encounters with sexism pretty darn rare.  But not non-existent.  Not yet.

Jan Wilberg Janice Wilberg