Addiction Counseling, Program Administration No comments yet

Some Tips for Making Good Referrals

By on February 20th, 2012

patient_referralsWhen homeless people look to rescue missions for help, they come with a wide variety of needs.   These include:

  • food, clothing and shelter
  • job counseling and training
  • legal assistance
  • literacy training and other educational skills
  • parenting skills training
  • family and couples counseling
  • medical care and family planning services
  • social support services
  • child care during treatment
  • psychiatric assessment and mental health services
  • help to move into permanent housing

No program has staff with expertise in all of these areas   Also, when there is simply no more room in the facility to take additional clients, it is time to make referrals.   And, even if a program participant is dismissed for using alcohol or drugs or other disciplinary reasons, making an appropriate referral is a great way to minister to them.   Therefore, rescue mission workers need to understand the principles of making good referrals.

A.    Knowing When to Make a Referral — Referrals are most commonly made when a client has a need and there are not resources in-house to handle it.   Therefore is important to develop an inventory of in-house resources and expertise.   Do this by listing the various problems and needs of the people who look to the mission for help.   For each area noted, determine who can best assist clients with that particular need.   Are their staff members or volunteers who have experience or expertise in financial counseling, for instance.

B.  Identifying Referral Resources — People become homeless when they don’t know how to access the resources that are available to them.   So, we need to teach our clients how to access needed resources when they encounter problems in their lives.   If they learn to do this while staying at the mission, they are more likely to access needed resources once they complete the program. A community referral directory or computer database — complete with phone numbers and contact persons — should be available to rescue mission workers who work directly with program participants.   This should include social service agencies, along with churches that are receptive toward mission clients, local professionals, and support groups.  

C.   Working with Other Agencies   – It is always good to list specific individuals at various agencies with whom your ministry has had a favorable contact in the past.   Often, asking for a person at the agency by name can help the staff member making the referral to cut through the “red tape” encountered at some agencies. Other rescue missions are important referral resources that are often underutilized.   This is especially true for new and smaller missions without established residential recovery programs, other member organizations offer specialized help to people struggling with addiction or families in need of long-term assistance.   Using the online directory of missions that are part of   the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions is one way to become familiar with some of the innovative programs offered at member rescue missions. Developing an effective referral directory — and keeping it up-to-date can be time-consuming. Therefore, it should be a responsibility assigned to one staff member who will add new resources and confirm the accuracy of current listings.

D.  Following Up on Referrals — When referrals are made, there should always be a follow-up contact to the agency.   This helps build relationships with referral resources and gives us a direct line on the services that were provided instead of relying on information from the clients themselves.   This also keeps clients from being dishonest or manipulative, playing the referral against the program (an visa versa). For the sake of confidentiality and to comply with privacy laws, clients will usually need to sign “release of information” forms that grants the referral source permission to share information with workers at the rescue mission program.   To make this sort of arrangement work, all parties involved must have an understanding ahead of time.   Tell the individual to whom you are making the referral that you expect the client to grant you this permission.   And, tell the client you will be asking them to give it to the mission staff, as well.

These types of arrangements have be benefit of giving mission workers important information about the services clients receive in order to better assist them.   It also helps to further develop relationships with other agencies and organizations in the community.

 

Nonprofit Management, Program Administration No comments yet

Taking Care of Staff Members

By on February 20th, 2012

How can we be sure we are taking care of the needs of the program staff members?

 

Most people working at rescue missions don’t view their work as simply a “job.” They consider it a ministry or, more precisely, a “calling.”   As a result, they tend to be highly motivated employees. Yet, by keeping a few simple human resource management principles in mind, rescue mission leaders can do a lot to encourage them and help them to be even more happy and satisfied in their work for the Lord.

Why people “burn out” – Working with troubled people can be very stressful and makes rescue mission workers very susceptible to “burn out.”   In her 1994 IUGM Annual Convention Seminar, in Denver CO, Cindy Stutheit, Program Director of Denver Rescue Mission’s Champa House, noted some of the factors that cause burn out for mission workers:

Lack of communication

Frustration

Emotionally draining

Too much responsibility

“Losing people, souls & lives” versus “losing an account”

Physically taxing

Poor boundaries and codependency

Tyranny of the urgent–daily rut of routine and poor crisis management

Poor training

Heavy workload

Inexperience and unrealistic expectations

No personal space

24-hour job for live-in staff

Establishing a set of priorities for meeting staff members’ needs will help them avoid burn-out and will inspire them to high performance in their work.

Meetings Their Basic Needs – Everyone is concerned about meeting his or her basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter. These basic needs are satisfied through wages and job security. Staff members must know   that as long as their work is satisfactory, their job will be secure. Secondly, rescue missions must offer adequate wages if they are to attract and keep good staff members. When their basic financial needs aren’t being met, it becomes impossible for them to remain motivated and to perform their work satisfactorily.

Meeting Their Social Needs – Rescue mission workers need and enjoy small talk among themselves and group interaction. They enjoy telling about weekend trips, family needs, hopes and dreams. An effort needs to be made to set time aside for wholesome, informal group gatherings.

Meeting Their Ego Needs – The ego needs of the workers are met through esteem and self-fulfillment. At the rescue mission, this need can be met by encouraging acceptable job performance, ethics, dress, language, and also by periodic evaluation for merit and for promotion. In other words, by making sure that each staff member knows that her or his work is appreciated.   Secondly, dead-end jobs are seldom satisfying. A promotion can be as rewarding as a raise. A title is a status symbol, a name indicating a job position, an important status symbol, even in the rescue mission. Some thought needs to be devoted to developing a “job entry career ladder system.”   Staff members must have the opportunity for career mobility.   They need to be able to move upward as they gain experience and training, and as new positions become available.

Meeting Their Self-fulfillment Needs – Most staff members need to be creative in order to attain some measure of self-fulfillment. To be creative in the rescue mission context means that when a staff member has new and practical ideas, they are used whenever practical. Rescue missions have many staff members who are imaginative and like to solve difficult problems. Some want to take part in management decisions. Since the staff members are the people closest to “the action,” they often understand the operation better than those in leadership do.   Many constructive changes have originated with a staff member’s suggestions and recommendations. By listening to their views, experiences, and suggestions, wise rescue mission managers will motivate and encourage such a staff member to do bigger and better things.

Personal rewards are also effective in motivating. For example, if a staff member suggests an idea or method that is cost saving, a bonus would be appropriate. Citations, public acknowledgment and the conferring of certificates of distinguished service or appreciation are also valuable. Recognition in the mission’s monthly newsletter or magazine is another good way to reward the creative staff member and to stimulate others in this direction.

Meeting Their Spiritual Needs – Prayer and the Word of God are a part of everyday life at the rescue mission.   Still, apart from their service at the rescue mission, it is vital that staff members participate in the life and body of a local church.   They need the fellowship of believers where they can find encouragement and inspiration. They need interaction with people who are not looking to them to meet their needs, but rather minister to them.

In summary, five important motivating factors for rescue mission workers are:

Keep them informed.

Give them some control over their actions.

Challenge them with work that can lead to recognition for their efforts.

Provide them with the opportunity to achieve and advance in their career.

Encourage them to find spiritual and emotional refreshment outside of the rescue mission.

  

February 1999

Program Administration No comments yet

A Few Thoughts for Chaplains and Counselors

By on February 20th, 2012

Good chaplains and  counselors start “working themselves out of a job” when they first get involved.   They truly succeed when the troubled people they help no longer need them.   The opposite is what I call “missionizing” – the rescue mission version of institutionalization.   It is possible to teach needy people to function successfully while staying in the mission, but not prepare them to live a healthy, sober life after they have left.

There are a few ways to avoid this.

A. Equip people to help themselves: Discover each program participants needs and help him/her to own these needs for themselves.   Telling people what they need does little good if they don’t eventually “own” those needs for themselves.   Sometimes needy people expect us to “fix them.”   However, successful recovery begins when addicts take responsibility for their own lives.   This begins by bringing them to a saving knowledge of Christ — taking responsibility for their own eternal destinies.   We need to create other essential “confrontations with reality” for each individual with whom we work.

For instance, it might be obvious to you that an individual has a drug problem.   Some may even verbally agree.   But until this truth is accepted in his “heart of hearts,” he will not be motivated to change.   Education about addiction, support groups, one-on-one counseling and fellowship with other addicts who are in recovery all can work together to help such an individual to begin to recognize his own need.

B. Help them access community resources: Identify resources in the community that address needs that cannot be met in-house (e. g. legal aid, medical services, vocational training and self-help groups).   No organization has all the resources in-house to meet the needs of all those who look to them for help.   A community referral book listing resources available in the local community — complete with phone numbers and contact persons — should be a fixture in each chaplain’s office.

People become homeless when they don’t know how to access resources that are available to them.   So, we need to help people learn how they can access these resources as they encounter problems in their lives after the rescue mission program.

A special note of caution: Never refer without a follow-up contact to the agency.   This helps build relationships with referral resources and gives us a direct line on the services that were provided instead of relying on information from the person we sent to them.

C. Establish benchmarks on the road to success: Help program participants to evaluate their options, to see progress and establish “benchmarks” for measuring growth.   A sober, healthy lifestyle is not automatically picked up just by hanging around the mission for a certain length of time.   A formal, written recovery plan (or discipleship plan) should be developed for each individual in a mission’s long-term program.   The purpose of such a document, which should be reviewed and updated often, is to help program people think through their options, to identify their own needs, and to determine which specific actions they must take to get their needs met.   This should be developed in the form of a checklist with target dates for taking the predetermined actions and the actual date they were done.

Providing solid benchmarks for growth gives program participants a sense of movement and a way to evaluate their own progress in the journey to a new and sober life. Creating a situation where they experience a series of small successes that lead to stability in their lives is a great self-esteem builder.

Model a healthy godly lifestyle.   Be an example in word and deed of the principles you hope program participants will adopt.   It is critical that we help mission program participants learn to walk with the Lord, to listen to their consciences, and to make personal prayer and Bible study a part of their daily lives.   It is also important that the mission’s staff members remember that they may be the first examples of real Spirit-led Christianity that many of the people we work with have ever observed.   Our attitudes and actions speak about the nature and heart of the God we serve.   May we always be a reflection of Him to those in need!

D. Assist them to get the right, healthy people in their lives: Help program participants to develop new personal and social resources that will contribute to a positive life style.   Even after people graduate from the mission program, they have a real need for ongoing support to succeed at life on their own.   I would say that we are wildly successful if people leave our programs as struggling baby Christians!   Therefore, it is absolutely essential that we help them to become integrated in two communities while they are with us, so they will have time to make them an ongoing part of their lives after the mission

First, they need to make new, positive relationships with other believers.   The lack of support and meaningful relationships with other people is essentially why they became homeless in the first place!   Secondly, because recovery from chemical addiction is not a “do-it-yourself” proposition, they need to be connected with the recovering community.   This is best accomplished by making participation in outside support groups a vital component of the latter stages of a mission recovery program. (A word of caution: be sure that you have visited the support groups yourself before sending mission program people to them.)

 

Portions originally appeared in the April 1999 edition of RESCUE, the journal of the AGRM