Women Homeless shelter
Women Homeless shelter offers one of the most incredible opportunities for anyone aspiring to become a helping professional give that it has the well-equipped department and experienced personnel; who are continuously devoted to unleashing the task at hand leave alone the career ladder progression. It is highly historically decorated in that it has been operational for 80 years, sailing on the vision born by the late Dr. Mathew Schuler a psychotherapist who held the view of extending a hand to inject the society with need blood of psychologically renewed personnel who have been of late adversely affected but can now comeback a fresh. One of the most peculiar things portrayed in all the departmental walls of the organization is the saying, ‘GIVE A HAND, TAKE A HAND’ an inspiration slogan by the founding father whispered to the ears of everyone in the organization to clarify the importance of the organization’s establishment and the driving force in its service delivery.
The organization was structured into ten departments: customer care, finance, psychotherapy, social work, medicine, education, ministry, hospitality, human resource, and ICT. I had the opportunity to serve under three departments: psychotherapy, education, and ministry. They were headed by Dr. Jane martins, Dr. Sebastian Harshen, and Rev. Paul Thompson, respectively. The nature of the psychological and ministry departments and their operability seem to be alike as they all involve counseling and enduring the deepest pain of the attendees but tackle different aspects.
The psychological department, as noted earlier, is led by Dr. Jane Martins. It usually entails the improvement of the personnel’s sense of wellbeing physically, emotionally, and mentally. It aspires to alleviate personnel distress feelings and come up with resolutions to crises. All activities within the organizations were anchored on the ability to understand the four main approaches of psychotherapy from which one is set to establish their criteria in handling the different personnel at hand. One thing that was mandatory to appreciate while counseling is the ability to develop a rapport with the attendees given their emotional imbalance and different levels of stress, given the indifferent magnitude of strenuous activities they have encountered. Most attendees, as I have noted, a generally not receptive at all for the counseling session, and it is easy for one to give up as you bear within your mind the ‘the need do the activity,’ but they can’t figure it out. Therefore, patience is one of the essential virtues that voluntarily or involuntarily need to be developed. Besides, one is set to learn to communicate with the attendees establishing the right mood for a talk given that therapy thrives on the constructive conversation to develop a consensus with the attendee first before driving home the desired conclusion that is primarily bound on the approach that you choose to use.
Most are the times that Dr. Jane Martins used to walk into the departments posed mind-boggling questions that usually left the staff in awe and engage in constructive discussion to get solutions that, in most cases, they were attendee-bound. One day, in an afternoon session, she called me to her office and posed another mid bogging question. She asked, ‘What will you do if somebody calls you and tells you that they want to commit suicide?’ I was dumbfounded and had nothing to answer my learned supervisor. After a series of trials, she sent me away and promised to call me at the same time to hear of my verdict on the case. The next day I got the call and had nothing constructive to present on the matter. I pitied myself for the inability, but it opened my eyesight in the complexity of the problems, not only dealing with the adults but the different personalities that I’m set to encounter while I am delivering the service. The answer seemed wild, rigid, but paradoxically set on how I am to render and the follow up thereof.
She answered and explained it in the following manner, ‘well, congrats for trial, but that not the case. If somebody calls you to report on their desire to end their life, think twice. The explanation may not work on the necessity of life to the person on the phone. All they want is the end and end only. So, in this case, you are in a dilemma. No time to say no since no won’t work. Is there any alternative to this? Yeah! What if you affirm their desire? They don’t expect that from you. But you have given it. This is set to give them a sense of thought. After a few minutes, give that person a call. I’m sure they will pick it. Ask him/her, ‘Are you dead? ‘That will confuse him/her further and in buy time for an act of saving possible. However, you need to take the necessary steps to ensure that it will save that life as a second thought is developing since we all have different personalities and approaches to various circumstances.’ I was dismissed but largely left thinking about the case as it was simplified and tried to establish the significance. Later, she called me and made me appreciate the fact that the helping profession does not need to embrace a ‘Need-not-do’ attitude. She emphasized the need to embrace the reality and the magnitude of the situation in the sole manner that is supposed to be rendered rather than pitting the attendees on their circumstances. She asserted that bearing the attendee’s flaws is a critical thing in their road to recovery but does not necessarily need to dictate the outcome since one will primarily anchor their belief on some behaviors which, in most cases, need to be dropped for a comprehensive recovery.
An attendee always holds to the view that they are right despite the struggles. Admission remains a deserted part of the recovery process. While focusing on acceptance, one needs to establish a balance between the flaws that they hold so much dearly as the rightful deed or the wrongful- in some cases where non-humanistic acts were done to them- and the real solution to the problem at hand that they may not be willing to adopt given that mostly they hold the view that neither does bear the pain they have or the solution is primarily impractical and mainly insignificant to the problem. Helping professionals were meant to understand that the prime area of operation is dealing with fellow humans who are mostly emotionally driven more than we can claim they think. One should not despise their thinking part, given that they make a conclusion on their flaws and have a definite answer to any issue at hand despite seeking any shoulder to lean on.
In many cases, it was surprising to understand that some have an answer on the issue they seek to hand on and only wish to clarify their resolution while standing resilient on any solution that is against their prior decision. Therefore as portrayed, while dealing with anyone set to give a shoulder, helping professionals need to embrace a management approach of every situation to establish equilibrium, bearing in mind that the essential thing is to make them come back to their senses and normalize.
Also, there was a need to understand the necessity of emotional balance and intelligence within the department. One of the greatest truths is that despite being endowed with emotions, the ability to express and control is limited to most humanity without the exclusion of the helping professionals given the nature of personalities they continuously deal with. Ringing to consensus, the personal emotions and the ability to understand and appreciate others’ emotions remained to be vital and significant in delivering the required service. One needed to make the attendee appreciate the fact that they have feelings and are allowed to express them. However, the expression act needed control or somewhat limited capacity to overcome some flaws which are emotionally affiliated. It was shocking to learn that most flaws are mostly emotionally attached, and the inability to observe the emotions as the professional may injure the attendee adversely or slightly; they injure themselves to a non-recovery zone.
I got an opportunity to serve under the education department to help under, Dr. Sebastian Harshen of Education department after being transferred from the psychotherapy department in line with the organization’s internship policy that strives to expose the interns to maximum work experience and make the competition in service delivery. When I took a look at the organogram of the organization, I found it odd to have a department named ‘Education Department.’ Many questions ringed my mind as to its significance; little did I know I will get the opportunity to serve in it. Indeed I found that it is one of the essential units and cannot be downplayed whatsoever. Every organization has a significant way of ensuring that their staffs are continuously updated far from human resource training and development programs.
This department primarily delves into the need that recovery and progression is an educative session that needs adequate, reasonable, and practical programs that enable the attendees to recover quickly and have positive progress after their rescue. This calls for continued research and development activities that are spearheaded by the department to make sure that they devise most practical, appealing, and quick to understand programs or preferably modules that need to be adopted by the attendees in all the stages.
It was worth noting that all the activities here are anchored on the belief of ‘How can I get better.’ As a practitioner, you wear the attendee’s shoe as a sober attendee and try to look for ways that you need to become healthy again, not instantly but progressively. One of the things that are emphasized is an analogy of a butterfly as it is famously called within the department, ‘The Butter race’ where one narrows to the pure science of metamorphosis. The four stages of butterfly metamorphosis Egg- Larva- Pupa- Adult help the professional first appreciate the fact that full recovery is bound on a series of developmental stages where each stage is better than the previous one. One of the questions that one needs to ask is, ‘will this make them better than they were?’, in a bid to establish a regular session that is bound to ensure completeness just as a butterfly eventually vibrant and beautify after the complete cycle.
Lastly, during the last phase of the program, I got transferred to the ministry under Rev. Paul Thompson, one of the standouts and charismatic personnel within the organization. Despite being a severe senior guy is humorous and down to earth at most times, an aspect that is mostly not evident in more. The department merely emphasizes the need to have spiritual nourishment to the attendees, not necessarily those that particularly need thoughtful attention, but all in that humanity is full of incapacities in their doings.
Within the department, every helping professional needs to understand the responsiveness of humanity to divinity and learning how to establish a constructive relationship between humanity and divinity. Rev. Paul consistently seeks the practitioners to understand the reality that humans keep on creating problems that they lack the ability to develop solutions. They lack the understanding that every issue formed at a certain level cannot be solved at the same level and therefore needs a higher level to resolve it. In this case, the ministry department entails understanding the sole responsibility of God as the prime source of the solutions in the dealings on human flaws and the need to seek the intervention of divinity.
The interventions of the divinity are not only set to help the attendee in their road to the desired recovery but also to the practitioner’s in their daily activities to be thoroughly equipped with the divine wisdom in addressing some of the issues at hand as most bear complexities that are beyond humanistic views. As practitioners, emotions are part of every human being and are bound to express feelings. However, psychologically, relying on emotional balance alone cannot make one thrive fully in the career, given that in most cases, it is flanked with many ups and downs that stand out to be demotivating, draining, and unappealing. Therefore the appreciation of Deity’s role in service delivery is essential for a successful career. Also, it is worthy of understanding the practicality of soul-body-spirit interaction as a helping profession for one to be in a position to effectively render the necessitated response to the problem at hand of the attendee. In most cases, what the attendee may be facing, primarily the spiritual may not be acknowledgeable to them, and one may render a remedy to an issue in a dimension that generally cultivates stagnancy or even worsen the state of the attendee.
In conclusion, one of the most significant things learned as a helping professional in Homeless Women Shelter is the ability to appreciate the nature of humanity and learning to set a dimension of approach to help the attendee to recover maximally. Not all people have the same capacities to absorb the difficulties at hand, not the answers presented. Still, given the fact that one can restructure everything in a presentable manner, none is limited to drive the desired outcome home despite the difficulties. In reality, helping professionals mainly, as said by Dr. Mathew Schuler, ‘GIVE A HAND, TAKE A HAND,’ entails responsiveness to some of the elaborate and unfathomed duels within the human race, that demands keenness and scrutiny before delivering any verdict which should at all scores be favorable.
One should continuously and bear in mind the fact that the prime motivator of the profession is crisis solution and bring to specific the anonymity that humanity has been thriving through within the entanglements of the flaws at hand. The ability to establish a rapport, communicate, and distinctively drive home the solution is one of the plausible skills that one is firmly equipped with, given that they mainly play a part in helping professions. Therefore, as noted earlier, in everyone had extended, there is a receptive hand waiting; consequently, one should never be ashamed of extending a hand to make individual lives better.