The Black List

As a paraprofessional, I’ve been in some pretty tight spots.  Getting hit in the head making sure that a driver can safely stop, or trying to stop a participant from going after a vanilla-normie…  There’s many situations where it’s uncomfortable to try and explain what’s going on, and a good number of those where even the best para isn’t going to know all the details.

And while there are many people who will come by and thank me for doing my job, and tell me that I’m such a good person for basically making it to work every day (spoiler alert:  I’m not such a good person all the time), there are a fair number of people who walk into a situation and automatically decide that they know what’s going on basically because they were the first vanilla-normie on the scene.

That leads to some pretty questionable calls.  Paras that will be getting punched in the face will have cops show up, and have had it reported to them that people saw them punching the participant in the face.  Paras who use a commanding voice to try and kick a guy out of whatever they’re doing are told to stop yelling at the participant.  I’m not saying that our students and clients shouldn’t be taken seriously, but it does lead us to being put on the line, more than the physical, mental, and emotional stress already placed upon us by performing the job as per usual.

It leads to The Black List.  Now, for anyone who is reading this who isn’t a para, “The Black List” is pretty much the same thing as a burn on a spy, if you’ve seen Burn Notice.  It’s an unofficial listing of people who will, for one reason or another, never hired by any agency that works with our population, as well, often, as in any agency that works with children or the elderly.  It “doesn’t exist” in the same way that modern racism “doesn’t exist”.  There is no website that has the names and the offences of people who have been black-listed.  There’s just a cultural backing, a rumor mill, and a mutual understanding between parents and agencies, as well as by other paraprofessionals.  When you’re on The Black List, you’re looking for a new career, probably in a new area.

It exists for a pretty legitimate reason:  You don’t want bad people working with people who cannot speak up for themselves.  You don’t want Chester the Molester running around with a trenchcoat and teaching kids about how to dress themselves.  You want that mofo under lock and key, and as far away from you and yours as possible.

But the problem is, it’s not a “real” list.  There’s no court that sentences you to sign your name on The Black List, and thus you have to stay 50 feet from schools and animal hospitals or whatever, and post that you’ve been listed.  There’s no set of checks and balances to do quality control on who is on the list, and who isn’t.  Say that a perfectly capable and earnest para gets caught in the crossfire of politics or a parent with an axe to grind, and the rumor mill carries away an outright lie.  They’re still black-listed.

It doesn’t help that organizations that tend to work with our clientele are also constantly looking to be noticed for how just and true, good and kind they are.  I mean, seriously, they’re like sad little puppies that are looking for love and affection- except instead of love, I mean money, and instead of affection, I mean good PR.  The minute the story of an abuse case comes up, suddenly they have a band of parents with pitchforks and torches ready to go to town on them.  So what do they do?  At best, they pull the person from working with the participants (often without pay) so that they can ‘investigate’ the matter for weeks or months at a time.  At worst, they fire the person and never even really look into it.  In the latter case, the para is instantly on The Black List, and in the former… well, they just as well might be.  No one wants to trust a person with their loved ones who has had allegations brought up against them.  The same employee who was indispensable to the company for years, is suddenly too hot to handle, and the company either throws them directly under the bus, or they do nothing to help repair that person’s reputation and they go the way of the slow burn.

It’s sad, in an industry that pays so little, that has as hard of a time hiring people as it does, that the reward for service is often a kick to the curb.  I mean, pretend that the turnover rate among paraprofessionals wasn’t so high.  Pretend that a person outlasted their forties in the field, and started getting up to their fifties and sixties.  How much time does a person have to spend in our position before they end up with a bad back, bad knees, bad joints…  When that worker bee runs out of juice, it’s not like they find a place where you can still be useful (most of the time).  The rule tends to roll, “you can’t do the work, you can’t work”.

No, by and large the beginning and the end of our stories are all the same.  You come in with hopes and energy, and then you try to burn out before you black out.  Perhaps there’s some solid proof that financially we’re kind of screwed in this kind of work.  Perhaps you have to take the aches and pains with a grin.  But when it comes to The Black List, we deserve better.

Special Olympics: My only complaint

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege to attend my first Special Olympics event.  For whatever reason, in my adventures through The Community I’ve never actually been invited to attend them before.  Not in that ‘No Barry, last time you got everyone drunk and singing Irish whiskey songs’ not-invited sort of way, just that it hasn’t ever come up.  Anyways, here I am, for the first time ever, and I’m floating around working with people and watching events, and seeing people I haven’t seen in a blue moon.

            And it was genuinely a pretty good time.  I mean, with every special needs centered activity, it appears that there’s a pretty hefty lack of communication, and some general confusion, but in my group, at least, everyone who signed up to participate got to participate in every event they signed up for.  So, kudos for keeping it together, team.

            It was great, though.  A number of families came by to show support and watch their family member participate.  There were enough people that the stands were relatively full.  There were the girls- must have been from the high school that was hosting- that were going around to participants, and cheering directly around them.  Which, you know, considering the population, actually caused some incidents in itself, but for the most part it was rather charming, and many of the participants walked away with a big ole’ grin on.

But this article was prefaced with a title that leads one to suspect there was something amiss.

Very astute, Mr. Bolded Transitional Sentence!  My only complaint was that a handful of participants did not seem to actually have wanted to be there.  I mean, I’m not talking about people who signed up and changed their mind on D-Day.  Nor am I referring to people who went, did their schpiel, and then didn’t want to have to wait for the other students in their programs.  I mean people who probably didn’t have any interest in becoming a Special Olympian to begin with, but through pressure of institute, family, or some other outside force, they were conscripted to participate anyways.

            We work in a field of individuals who often cannot voice their own wants and needs.  And while the Special Olympics is an absolutely wonderful event, which truly benefits the people who go out of their way to train and participate for it, it isn’t for everyone.  I mean, yes, it’s for anyone who wants to sign up, come what may, regardless of physical capacity or condition which may cause a conventional competition to shut their doors in your face.  It’s for anyone.  But it’s not for everyone.  Just like our charges’ inability to vocalize wants and needs, they also may not have the ability to discuss preference.

            Let me put it to you this way.  Let’s say that there were a set of physical trials set for people who didn’t have special needs to participate in.  Let’s call them The Less Special Olympics.  Not everyone who exists outside of the special needs umbrella is going to want to train and participate in them.  I, for instance, am much more prone to the ‘modeling for stone statues’ side of ancient Greece rather than the show up everyone with expressions of physical finesse and strength side.  I’m just too humble, and it would really feel bad to kill all those poor athletes’ ambitions by thoroughly trouncing them.  So, maybe, using my ability to self-advocate, I’d do something like say ‘hey, don’t sign me up for them there The Less Special Olympics’.

            And then, having voiced that objection, I would follow up by then not actually participating in The Less Special Olympics.

            However, some of the people engaging in the Special Olympics seem to have had that choice stripped away from them.  Whether by an agency that wanted to show how many of their participants they could engage in them, or by family who wanted them to get ‘as much out of life as they possibly can’, somehow that person, who may have other dreams and ambitions- ones of art, of music, of automotives, or geography, or politics, or anything that lays outside of the quasi-Olympian sport circle- are made to participate.  And that frustrates me.

But don’t get me wrong.

I’m very much in support of the Special Olympics.  In fact, I think that the future of day programming is going to be the sort of specialization that the Special Olympics stand for.  I mean, have I mentioned how much of a fanboy I am for Arts of Life?  People SHOULD be able to pigeon-hole their interests, and do the sorts of things that they really love.  Artists should be able to do art, regardless of whether they have special needs or not.  And athletes should be able to compete.

       But not everyone is going to be an artist.  And not everyone is going to be an athlete.  Just as we should be pushing people to try new things, and let them be included in the world that lays just outside their doorstep, we also shouldn’t be forcing them to be who they may not want to be.

       Now excuse me, I’ve got a block of marble that’s craving my image.

Mini-Hiatus!

Hey yo, I didn't forget to update, I've just been hella busy.

In the next couple weeks, I'm going to be moving, and after that things should be a little bit easier to manage.  I'm gonna be doing a couple of pieces that I already have partially worked out, but to give me enough time to make them the super special stuff that you crave when you come and hang out on my blog, I'm gonna need you to wait patiently.

(Yes, for those of you who don't know, that's a phrase I use occasionally in the workplace.  YOU'RE PART OF MY IN-JOKES, CONGRATS!)

Anyways, stay frosty, and I'll be back soon.  Give me...  like...  Two weeks.  Three weeks.  Somewhere between two and three weeks.

When you have to fail so that your team can succeed

The teacher of the classroom I am employed in is moving on to another workplace (congrats by the way).  Before she moved on, she reminded me something which I've had to teach other people before.  She told me, (paraphrased) "If you do everything, and fix everything, then no one else will need to help, and the participants are going to suffer for it."

She's a bit of a pragmatist, but it's a piece of vital, and multifaceted wisdom that we continually forget as we try to hold together our weird little families.  If "I" do all the work, then there's no reason for my employer, my team, or the participants to work together.  All that we teach each other is that I am immensely capable, and that people should rely on me.

Which, by the by, she reminded me that this was despite knowing that I WAS immensely capable, and that people probably COULD rely on me.  You can imagine me standing proud and tall in a superhero position if you'd like.

But the profession of paraprofessional isn't to fix everyone's problems for them.  Hell, if anything, our job is to create more problems, and toughen people up.  Before you question that, remember- everything that we do is for the participants.  Everything.  So when we spend fifteen minutes waiting for a student to open the door without prompting them to do so, it's not because we're letting people rely on us and letting people get off easy.  It's because we know that if we do everything for our participants, their quality of living will be worse, and that we will have essentially failed in our duty of trying to create a more independent person.

It goes against our better nature, and sometimes you have to catch yourself doing it, or hope that one of your teammates has the bollocks to remind you.  When you see a participant spilling their food all over themselves, your first instinct is to run over and help.  You don't want them to have to lose part of their lunch because they don't have fully developed hand/eye coordination (also, you probably don't want to have to clean up afterwards, letsjustbehonest).  But if you never let them fight through their lunch period and try to get their food for themselves, you eliminate the opportunity for them to ever really develop those skills, which affects so much more than that very moment.  With developed hand/eye coordination, you get a person who can open doors, pick out choices, perform work, bathroom...  By 'fixing' that problem for them, you're stopping all those possibilities from ever happening.

But if I haven't made it clear by now, people with special needs aren't some strange alternative lifeform that works differently than you or I, parapro or rocket scientist (though, if you are a robot or an alien, maybe we work a little differently.  Also, thanks for reading to any robots or aliens out there).  The psychology that stumbles a person with special needs from developing hand/eye coordination, or prompt independence, or emotional intelligence, or whatever...  is the same psychology that stumbles a paraprofessional who never gets to deal with a crisis, bathrooming, or community interaction.  And, for that matter, it's the same psychology that stumbles a classroom that never has to deal with the graduation of a student, paraprofessional, or teacher because the rest of the team continues on as if nothing ever happened.

If I decided to keep everything going without the teacher, what would happen when a new teacher DID get hired?  Being loyal to a previous teacher's ideology, classroom setup, and planning might get you through a week or two when you're holding the fort, but when the new teacher arrives, it puts you at odds with them, and often gives them an uphill battle to fight against to get new insight put into place.  And what does it gain you?  Plans which haven't been updated for the duration of the transition between teachers, frustration, and possibly enough stress on that new teacher that it might cause them to rethink taking this position.  Or, worse, an enemy which you have to deal with for the remainder of your mutual cohabitation.  Remember that teachers are not having a turf war, that we can learn from one another, and that we're all in this together.

And if the organization decides that my effort can satisfy the room and allow them to take their time to find a replacement?  Let's face it, I don't get paid enough to be as amazing as I am.  My guess is that you don't either.  Why do you want to worry about all the planning that a teacher has to do, when you're not making teacher pay, and may not even be qualified to handle the position?  Ask yourself:  Do I really want to deal with the parents, administration, and write things out like IEPs, while I continue to be paid as little as I am, more or less (because sub stipends are not quite the same as a for real pay upgrade)?

Finally, consider what happens to your team when you, eventually, find another workplace, find yourself with health problems, or leave the job for some other reason.  Sure, you might have been able to play the circus act without a high wire, but what happens when you get rid of the safety net as well?

I am thankful that the teacher I worked for reminded me about this.  And now, you can be thankful for my reminding you about this.  Remember:  We're a team.  There may be a "me" in team...  But they'll have to get ripped in half to do it.  And what are you left when me leaves?  Ta.

Bob Sandidge from The Care Campaign: Interview

Hello Mr. Sandidge,

Thank you for being willing to spend your time helping me answer some questions on behalf of the paraprofessional community.  I know that some of these questions have been answered by the audio interview that you have posted on the Care Campaign website, but I also know that many of my readers may be confused about the intricacies about how funding staff happens in the field that they work in.  I appreciate any answers or resources you might share with me, and I know that my readers will as well.

1.  Why are you petitioning the State of Illinois to raise the wages for direct support workers, when many of these workers do not work for the state, but rather for private or non-profit companies?

The direct support workers who work primarily for non-profit agencies are paid by allocations from the state.  This is part of a service formula for each client we serve whether in the community or in a community residence.  A certain amount is allocated for DSPs for the support and care of the individuals being served.  Generally, the public, and sometimes the employees, don't know that the employing agency doesn't have discretion over pay increases for the direct care staff. 

2.  When was the last wage increase for DSPs?

2007 was the last legislative pay increase which went into effect in FY2008.

There was some great news this last week though-  Governor Quinn heard the Care Campaign and included $1 an hour increase for DSPs in the FY2015 budget. The $1/hour increase is due to begin in January 2015! 

3.  What sorts of people and organizations, other than DSPs, are signing the petitions and working with the Care Campaign to help meet their goals?  (I sort of imagine other organization administrators, parents, individuals with disabilities, and other persons being among the crowd, though if it is only other DSPs that seem to be supporting The Care Campaign, that is useful information as well)

Good question.   Actually, The Care Campaign is a coalition of a number of service agencies, unions, and parents organizations.

The Arc of Illinois parents and families are supporting the program because they know that better pay will mean that people providing supports for their relative will be able to stay in the job and provide a continuity of support through time.

AFSCME is also part of the group and are getting out the word to their members across the state.

Currently the sponsoring members of Core Campaign are contacting senators and reps. from districts across the state to enlist support and have them sign on to support the bills.  Many of the homes and organizations employing DSPs are all over the state and the money that DSPs make flows into those communities for housing, food, living expenses so there is a plus to local economies across the state.

Clearly, communities as well as families, clients, and workers have a stake in this increase.  As people understand the flow of increases into the local economies it is easier to enlist support of community members and leaders.

4.  I've talked to many DSPs who have not heard of the Care Campaign, and yet you seem to be having a lot of success already in your endeavors.  What means have you been using to gather DSP support?

We have reached out a DSPs primarily through their employing organizations, however, at this point not all agencies throughout the state are on board with the campaign. In fact, the next phase of the Care Campaign is reaching out to every impacted organization in the state to position them to respond when we need calls to their legislators.  The fact that Governor Quinn put the $1 in his proposed budget by no means insures that the actual dollars will be passed in the House and Senate.

Reaching all of the DSPs in the state… there are about 24,000, is a challenge. The Care Campaign needs the support of DSPs and others as we get to the voting stage on legislation that we have been working to get in front of the legislative bodies in Illinois.

5.  How does The Care Campaign hope to accomplish their goals?

The first stages of the Care Campaign have been to enlist sponsors of legislation, which we have in both the House and Senate, and to make the Governor aware of the issue, which we have with our delivery of 18,000 postcards to him. The steps of getting legislation to support have been done. That part doesn't require massive support but is done by sponsoring members of the Core Campaign.

Now that we have something to support, we go to the next phase which is to reach out to not only DSP's but all members of the support community across the state.

6.  If one of my readers were interested, in what ways could they support the Care Campaign?

We need to keep encouraging people to sign the petition on the CareCampaignHQ.com site and
to sign up for the newsletter and to thank the Governor for putting the $1 in his proposed budget (at CareCampaignHQ.com/gov).   Every DSP and support worker needs to be a self-advocate to family, friends, associates, neighbors and community leaders and influencers- Not only to enlist support for the bills we need to pass for appropriations, but also to inform the community about the good and important work they are doing.  We’d also like to encourage DSPs and other workers throughout the state to blog, talk and share on social media so that more and more of the community is aware of the issue and, hopefully, will give it their full support.

This is a multi-year task. Even if we get what we are asking for, the increases will be a few dollars a year for a few years. And, depending on other budget variables, we may not get a vote this session but will need to push ahead for next year’s session. We are in it for the long haul and need long haul support.

Thank you again for answering my questions, Mr. Sandidge.  It was a pleasure to have you on Paraconfessional.  Good luck in your efforts.