On-Foot Outreach

This morning Shuchi and I were the first to go on Outreach with the staff here at CASPAR. The Outreach program is pretty awesome; there are a few staff members who's only job is to go out into the community and talk with/help the homeless. Stevie is the main Outreach staff member, he's loud, blunt, and describes himself as a "social butterfly". He had a great story and I was lucky to listen to all of the advice he had to offer. He told me a lot about working Outreach in a bad neighborhood in Boston (apparently Cambridge is a lot softer), and several things about the field of human service itself. Kelly and Rick were the other two Outreach-ers, both young and new to the job but definately had their own individual experience in the field as well, and had a lot of information for us. Although my feet were freezing cold (who comes unprepared to Boston?? me...) I tried to soak up absolutely everything they were telling us, and also get a feel for the atmosphere of the homeless community. Stevie & his partners know all of the homeless people of the area; they took us to some core areas where the clients hang out. Something really valuable that I learned from Stevie, among the many things, was to "not try and save the world". In other words, don't walk around a community preaching to the homeless and telling them the way that they should lead their lives. Instead, inform them; be open and honest and tell them what you can offer them, but draw boundaries and don't let yourself get personally attached. As a person who is really emotionally driven, I am going to make sure that I keep those words with me, especially if I do go into the human service field as I am planning on doing. Something else I learned, which really opened my eyes to the work that we are doing, is that Stevie and Kelly were both addicts themselves. They both have been clean for years, and are now turning around to help people who are in the same position that they were in themselves. Kelly said that the resources provided to her from similar Outreach programs were a huge factor in her recovery, and she wants to be able to show the homeless that have substance abuse problems that they CAN clean up. I really hope I can talk with the three of them some more before we leave Boston, especially Stevie. You can have all the college experience in the world, but if you don't have common sense and street smarts, you may not last in such an intense field.

Last night some of our group went out to explore Harvard, and the rest of us stayed back after dinner to hang out and talk with the clients. A lot of the questions that I had about the shelter were answered just by having conversations with them. The staff does not let you into the shelter unless you openly admit that you have a substance problem or are under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Its really eye opening to look around and know that, no matter how normal or kind someone is, they are under the influence of something that now basically controls their life. I also found out a little more about government housing, i was interested because several residents have said that they are "on the list for housing", and apparently the only qualification that you need to have is to be homeless. Stevie told me that there are some flaws in the system; the government will give an apartment to someone that was homeless in the woods for 10 years and not follow up on them, which is not a safe OR permanent solution to their problem. Stevie also told me some stuff about Social Security, which apparently is something that several of the homeless in the area (and anywhere, I can imagine) are on. The problem with Social Security is that, once they are approved, some of these homeless people with drug/alcohol addictions are being given lump sums of thousands of dollars...and if they're not being given lump sums, they are given a monthly limit to how much $$ they can have in the bank (ex. one can not have over $2000 in the bank), which basically encourages them to spend petty cash on their addictions. It seems to me like a vicious cycle...with a government that can only be SO involved, and only give so much money, a real solution to the homeless problem seems very distant. It frustrates me, but at the same time it shows me how important the type of work that we are doing here is. If you can't beat it on a larger level (aka government), then do as much as you can on a smaller scale and hopefully make a difference in peoples lives yourself.
As attached as I can feel myself getting to all of the people that I have met here, I am glad that I was able to learn a lot from the Outreach staff and can hopefully look at this line of work (which is probably the direction I am headed!) from a perspective like theirs. As much as I miss Madison, I know I am going to be sad to leave next weekend!

Eat Your Heart Out,

Brit