I blogged before wondering if we had sold compassion to bureaucracy. One of the things that happens in social services is that governments put out tenders for grants. Agencies compete for these grants aiming to give as much bang for the buck as possible. The best way to do this of course is often to help the person who is easiest to help. This means it is not in the agencies interest to help difficult people or people who fall outside of their target group, let alone help someone who’s problems do not coincide with the core function of the organisation. So a homeless, unemployed, drug using person would need to be seeing about a dozen or so different agencies. I know this is what happens because one of the the things people our agency meet need help with is trying to make sense of all of those agencies. If you have ever been to Centrelink for anything you’ll know how difficult that is, so this person it becomes ten times more difficult. With each service only wanting to or able to deal with a discrete part of the person’s whole problem the whole person is often ignored.
I'm not sure why I'm feeling so disenchanted with the whole social services sector at the moment. There are so many people in it with great hearts doing great stuff. I just feel like they are being ham strung and I'm kind of over that.
I'm not sure why I'm feeling so disenchanted with the whole social services sector at the moment. There are so many people in it with great hearts doing great stuff. I just feel like they are being ham strung and I'm kind of over that.
1 comment:
Hey Chris, I enjoy your words. It is encouraging to find another churchless pilgrim expressing faithfully.
I used to work for a church in Armidale, only 25,000 people but a large 'needy' (for want of a better word) community. I was only working in an admin capacity, but that meant that I controlled the 'emergency food cupboard' (Usually tinned chick peas) and handing out petrol vouchers. It was always very contolled who we could give it to and how.
We were encouraged to direct people down to Vinnies or the Sallies because they were better set up to deal with crisis situations, or to Centrelink for financial help. 9 times out of 10 they were directed to us by those organisations.
To be honest, I hated seeing people come in for assistance. I've played the guitar in fromt of 10 thousand people, I led worship and preached to hundreds at a time, but one person walking through the front doors asking for money or food would make me freak out.
I went through the PoD process and was accepted as a candidate for Minister of the Word. It/I fell apart during the training and haven't been back, but I've realised how bad we are as a society and as a church to deal with people, especially if they mightn't be easy.
By the way, I still cross the road if someone looks difficult.
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