Mental Help

“Steve, you’re needed out front right away! That client of yours is losing his mind on Bill again.”

I’ve had this request before. It seems it comes with more regularity lately. A client, usually one of my clients living with mental illness, has been triggered by a coworker who’s is either heavy handedly dealing with the client’s needs; or, they represent a triggering person in the client’s life.

I head out front to see what is happening.

“YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO MAN! I have a right to be here using this service!” I overhear as I approach the front desk.

Bill is trying his best to explain to the client, “You have a right to use the service as long as you sit quietly and don’t bother the other clients Nathan.” “Please calm down or I will have to call security.”

I probably hear Nathan arguing with my coworkers more often than I hear him interacting peacefully. He has been banned from our office twice in the past 3 years and the office manager is waiting for the chance to make it three strikes and he’s out. I know I have to deal with this quickly, or Nathan will lose the chance to ever get things straightened around in his life.

“Nathan,” I interject into the conversation. “How many times do we need to cover this one buddy?” “I need you to come with me so we can chat.”

“I’m just sitting here trying to do my job search until our appointment Steve.” “Bill starts hating on me as soon as I walk in every time I come here. No wonder I can’t find a job with this kind of service!” Nathan is exasperated while he tries to explain his side of the story.

“Come down to my office before someone says something they will regret.” I try to slow my breathing and calm my tone a bit more, hoping Nathan will follow suit.

It works quickly this time. Nathan follows me after my first request. It isn’t always this way. Sometimes Nathan and other clients come in amped up from something that triggered them before they arrive. Sometimes they do come in peacefully and I don’t even know they are there, but more often than not, clients like Nathan are a team work situation between 2 or more staff. It is these types of barriers that make this job more difficult than when I started the role 20 years ago. More and more clients coming in with multiple barriers to employment, like housing; childhood trauma; mental illness; or cultural barriers that have left their mark after a lifetime of facing inequity everywhere they look.

“Is there anything you need to get off your chest before we move forward with the appointment Nathan?” I like to give each client 10 or 15 minutes at the beginning of each appointment to unload something that may be revving them up that day so they feel heard, and I can see how it might impact our action plan this week.

“No Steve, things are still the same as last week.”

Nathan has been living in his truck for over three months and has run out of gas to get to appointments now. He parks his truck on a dirt road just outside of town and walks 20 minutes to our appointments every week when he is out of fuel. With no fixed address, he isn’t able to collect an income assistance cheque. Without that income, Nathan can’t secure an apartment or food. He relies on local church groups for food each week, and for the past few weeks, the weather has been good enough to collect bottles to return for some money for his cigarettes.

Nathan isn’t alone. I have 15 or 16 other clients as bad or worse in their situations. I can give them contact information for the homeless shelter, explain in detail, who to speak to at the various community support groups to get more support, but unless they have a support person with them, many of the clients who grace my door with this type of disability will not be able to complete all of the hoops to get back on track.

I head back out to the front desk as Nathan leaves the office. Part of me is heading out to make sure there is no more issue with Bill on the way out. The other part of me just wants to debrief with Bill and our manager to make sure things are calm for the next time one of my clients comes in, in the same state.

“It’s outside of the scope of our role Steve.” Our office manager always explains when I ask for approval to accompany a client to a meeting they really need to get through. Or want to make a more formal introduction to an employer for them. The biggest problem seems to be that there isn’t anyone in the community whose job it actually is to support people that have been marginalized in this way.

I spent many years researching this topic and speaking to anyone who would listen to me talk about the problem. For the most part, people would kindly agree and commiserate about the problem, but very few people were willing to hypothesize about the solution with me. Many had opinions about the answer, none had quantitative analysis on why their opinions should be the way forward for our community. In the meantime, more and more people continued to file into my office with barriers packed so high that I could barely make headway with their goals until they received service from a community partner.

Much of my research had unearthed tremendous stories about success in other areas, where someone had started a social enterprise or bought a small business and used it to employ people from varying backgrounds. The car wash that only hired people living on the autism spectrum. The community group who opened a café or a used clothing store to support people with intellectual disabilities. I even found two mental health groups in one community who supported people with mental health barriers.

One such agency provided a safe space for people living with mental illness to do woodworking during the day and then learn to sell their products to the community to fund their continued supportive and therapeutic programs. The other had a very intriguing approach. They would open a variety of businesses and would hire people with disabilities to perform the majority of the work in these businesses. The businesses came from such different industries that they were able to provide options for a large number of possible clients. The first organization began building tiny homes for the housing market to provide affordable housing for people facing poverty and homelessness in their community. The second organization even went so far as to partner with other agencies in their city to provide apartments with a housing first approach and then when clients felt ready to pursue employment, they were able to both work in one of four social enterprise businesses the organization ran, as well as work with career professionals who could help them secure long-term employment with businesses across the city.

A chance encounter with a young client one day reminded me of a program a neighboring city had created to support youth in their area who were in danger of becoming homeless and dropping out of high school. This program, which proposed to run a completely open social enterprise where all of the youth could not only find employment in the short term, but also grow their skills and expand ther own personal goals after tasting some success. The group managing the program would schedule the youth for shifts where they not only shadowed the management team, but after a couple of shifts in their job shadowing roles, took over the duties of each and every role that they were interested in within the organization. The dedicated staff person they took over for would be available to that youth for their entire time in the role, and would complete the other tasks that the youth wasn’t able to accomplish elsewhere in the operation while they were learning the new role.

It was this piece of the puzzle that crystalized for me, a way forward for our community’s short falls within the support programing we had in the area. I began speaking to other members of our community support network; calling the organizations I was reading about to set up meetings to discuss their best practices and look for ways for us to work together on a project in our community. At first, the busy schedules of these stakeholders made progress slow, but as time moved forward and relationships started to form, the walls came down around these keepers of information and I could see a strong plan coming together.

Now, how best to bring my community together to act on a project like this? Did the other service providers want to take up a stake in a solution, or were they too busy working in their organizations mission to see alternate ways for us to support programming for a broad range of barriers.

As luck would have it, a friend came to me for help with their business. They needed someone to complete some regular tasks, which were very important, yet super flexible with their scheduling needs. The tasks were highly repetitive, which would potentially make them easy to teach. This would mean we could reliably train any individual with an aptitude for the role, and they would become proficient enough to succeed in the role with the added flexibility and support that they required in order to maintain this type of role. It was a job which was needed in numerous businesses across our community, and one which businesses might be willing to contract to an outside organization to accomplish the work if they knew it would have a strong social benefit to the community.

Additional similar opportunities started becoming available to me to try odd jobs and see first hand how difficult or easy they might be to teach a new person reliably and efficiently. This experience was invaluable for my planning as I tried, at first unsuccessfully, to convince community partners that this was a viable option to support their clients, as well as the Nathan’s of the community who required additional supports outside of the job in order to maintain their success.

The final piece of the puzzle for my proposal became available one afternoon while I was scrolling social media. The owners of a local business, with tremendous upside were looking to sell their business in order to move closer to family in another community. Their business was providing a more than adequate income for the couple and their young family, but moving it along with them to their new home would be a substantial difficulty and they worried that their success might not be repeatable in their new community. I had made the couple’s acquaintance many years ago, when they were first starting out. Now might be the break our community needed to move forward with the project I had been working on for what felt like forever.

“How can I help you today Steve? It’s been a long time.” The store owner smiled as I walked through the door.

“I am looking for a price on some green paint and I know you guys have that natural paint that everyone says covers furniture so well.” I replied not wanting to dive right into anything formal right away. I have always had good luck with the slower relaxed approach to getting info.

“Come around the corner to the showroom. What kind of project are you working on this time?” Tim inquired.

Tim always loves hearing about customer projects. The social media community he and his wife have curated for the business over the years is a direct reflection of the care and interest Tim and Bobbie Rae take in their customers projects.

“I picked up a china cabinet to refinish for the kitchen. My wife has always wanted something in the corner behind the dining table.” I said. I love chatting about wood projects. It is a peaceful past time I can work on when the weather is nice.

“You know Tim, I would love to sit down and chat about your attempts to sell your business before you move back home.” I explained as we walked to the counter.

Tim looks at me with a quizzical look on his face. “Are you looking for yourself, or a client Steve?

“Actually, a whole lot of clients.” As I say this to Tim I can see this perplexed look come across his face.

“How would that work?” he asks.

I explain to Tim, “Well, I have been developing a project where, as a nonprofit, we could purchase or start up several businesses that would employ clients with disabilities and teach them employability skills so they can maintain full capacity employment in the community when they are comfortable pursuing a job on their own.”

Tim nods his head in interest of my idea. “So how would that work in a business like mine?”

I go on to explain to Tim the ins and outs of the idea and the various revenue streams I feel would work for people to come and go as they are available and learn quickly and efficiently and have room in their day to day to also learn other skills that could help them in the long term. Jobs like automotive detailing, commercial building cleaning and eventually some food prep or food production for humans or for pet food.

Tim looks at me excitedly and wonders how he might help to make that happen, because he would love that sort of project to be part of his business legacy after he leaves the community. We chat for an hour the first day. I return several times over the next few weeks and Tim and his wife agree that if their financial needs are met with the sale of the business, they would be willing to remain attached to the project as advisors for the first year of the project to help the clients learn the skills they need to be successful in this field. They also point out six or seven potential ways to significantly increase revenues for the business to increase the capacity for it to support a larger number of potential clients working on the project. It really feels like things are starting to take shape for the project. There are still two places I need to go to find out if this will be possible in the short term.

I make an appointment at the local business development group in our community. They have flexible financial tools to support different types of businesses in startup mode. They also have consulting professionals who can advise on the business development planning ahead of any actual commitment to getting this thing started. They recommend local business professionals like lawyers, accountants marketing firms who may have staff who would be suitable for a board of directors. The whole thing is intimidating, but I know it will be worth doing, and wildly satisfying if the plan comes to life.

The final stop before building a board of directors is a local cooperative business movement group who support community based social startups. They have some additional financial tools that I feel would be hugely beneficial to our startup group, but I lack and seriously productive knowledge of how to use these tools. Hence, visiting the experts.

With all of these meetings and all of this energy being used to investigate starting this project, it sometimes feels like a done deal as we move forward. I try, whenever I feel swept up in the whole thing, to step back and remind myself of my ‘why.’ Why am I putting in all of this extra effort? Why am I putting myself out there in the community to support other people? The answer I always come back to is that feeling I get when I am powerless, yet again, to support the added needs of a client with disabilities. With people in the community who will benefit from this project that I have yet to meet, I continue to push forward and strive to learn as much as I can and put together a team of experts who can be there pushing with me. Steering the decisions to be made, in the right direction and anticipating potential short falls for the project before we even begin. One thing I know for certain at this point is that with the right community support, this project could be a real game changer for people with disabilities. When the first person walks through the door with their pay cheque, knowing that a team is there to support them in making another pay cheque in two weeks, that will be the day when we celebrate as a team, the future success of our community. One where all residents have an equal chance of finding happiness and success, no mater what barriers they face. I can’t wait to see the look on Nathan’s face when I can give him a date to show up for his first day of work!