Death by Social Worker

I know a mentally ill elderly woman who also has a serious physical illness.  She is sleeping outdoors.  She has been like that for months.  She has lost fifty pounds and is in pain from the physical diagnosis.  She has a "Case Manager" at a "Community Health Clinic," you know, those places that like to tell you how benevolent they are.  Go there and try to get medical care, then you will know how benevolent they are.  Anyway, as a white person, she is a minority where we both live.  I am the same race as her.  If you are white, people within the social service industry here or the justice system will decide they don't like you and aren't going to help you.  This is especially true if you are intelligent and articulate, as this woman is.  Consequences can be severe.

There are about five resources to house the homeless mentally ill here, but her case worker told her there was nothing. She referred her to market rate rentals and let her sleep outside.  In her condition, this could have been a death sentence.  I wish I was surprised by this, but I'm not.  I went to that clinic and I had a bad experience too.  I didn't have insurance or Medicaid.  I wanted to pay cash on a sliding scale, which they supposedly offered.  The whole purpose of clinics like this is to take care of people like me.  They took two weeks to call me back.  They expressed surprise and disapproval that I didn't have any insurance, even though their purpose is to take care of the uninsured.  I told them I could pay the sliding scale payments.  They then proceeded to insult me and cause difficulties until I gave up.  They kept saying, you have to pay the $20.00.  I said, yes, I know.  They said, you can't not pay it.  Right, I said.  They said, you can't just run up a bill and not pay it.  It got to the point when they had literally said this eight times and I called them on it.  I said, why are you repeating this eight times?  They just kept repeating it like robots.  It was hateful. No one would want to get care in an atmosphere like that.  So I went away.  I've never had a good experience at a "Community Health Clinic."  Never once was I treated respectfully.  Never once was the problem diagnosed and treated.  

Anyway, this woman found her own housing.  The Case Manager just had to do some paperwork for her to get in.  She would have had her own apartment.  She trusted the Case Manager to follow up.  When the woman asked about it later, the Case Manager said that the housing project had no room for her.  She just found out that the housing project held the apartment for her for over a month and that the Case Manager lied.  They finally had to give the apartment up.  This was attempted murder.

The housing project manager said they will now get her in as soon as possible.  She still has the same Case Manager but she is working closely with the housing project manager now. They just need the Case Manager to rubber stamp it.  I hope she does.

* * * * *  

Not long ago, I learned of this woman's physical diagnosis and I started working to help her.  I used to be a volunteer benefits counselor for the disabled.  People said I was the best in the area, even the paid ones.  I made nine attempts to contact this woman because she is hard to contact.   I was able to tell her that she could take her Medicaid elsewhere instead of staying at this "Community Health Clinic."  I told her about the different types of therapists she could go to and that she could have weekly talk therapy as well as being medicated.  This was all news to her.  I called three prayer lines to have people pray for her. I had found resources where she could get a voucher for free clothes, and where she could walk through a warehouse of free furniture/household goods and pick what she wanted.  I had some lines on some temporary housing.  She found her own housing within a week after I started working and praying on her behalf.  Before I knew about her physical diagnosis, I had told her that she had to be her own social worker.  Too true.   

Every time I try to talk to her, she is impossible because of the mental illness.  She literally takes up all the space in your brain and life because she is not occupying her own space (nine contact attempts!).   As soon as I found out she was in line for some housing, I had some strong omens that I should stop working on her case because she drive would me and anyone I hooked her up with nuts.  It was hard to detach. This person was like Malibu Barbie to a social worker, you could dress her, you could put her in a house  .  .  .  .

I keep linking up with broken people who drive me nuts.  I did a lot of good when I was doing volunteer work, but the people I worked with were usually physically disabled and sought me out.  They wanted help.  The people around me now either seem slick and unreachable or broken and dysfunctional.  I keep getting involved with broken people because they seem more approachable and real.  I end up trying to fix them, maybe because of the vacuum of social contacts in my life.  I guess a normal person would distance themselves.  People just want people in their lives.  Also, what I can't fix in my life I maybe am trying to fix in theirs.  I keep telling myself that I have a NSW, No Social Working.  But that leaves me with no people in my life.  

Anyway, when I was thinking of trying to hook this woman up with a philanthropist who happens to own rental housing, a bird snuck into my apartment and somehow got into the bed where I was lying and got caught up in the sheets.  It was terrifying and icky.  They have bird mites.  I ended up having a pile of work to clean up after that.  That was an omen.  When I was thinking about just sending her the information I had gathered, I got another omen.  

So what she gets is what she's got.  She seems hopeful now.  It's too bad all the research will go to waste but there are strong omens and she drives me nuts.

NSW
NSW