This space not quite abandoned

There's work stuff that is asking to be blug, and the nonSW blog seems like the wrong place so if this mic is still on...

I'm always a little curious if other social workers get, oh what is it called, Impostor Syndrome? I was talking about this phenom with someone who recently began law school at a Very Prestigious University and apparently people get there and feel all This Is A Giant Mistake and probably have dreams where they show up to class without their head or whatever. It's dumb to think of this happening in social work because, for reasons that are another post, it's a complicated field populated by a fairly high percentage of people who aren't what you'd call brilliant (is this a terrible thing to say?) so why would you feel like an impostor?

Hang on while I redeem myself for a sec. I'm not saying I'm brilliant. I'm probably, in some way I should possibly be frowned at for, saying at times I feel more intellectual than a lot of people who do this work. And maybe that's fine, because what's more useless than an intellectual? It's possible everyone I'm talking about would, if told this, shrug and say: your point?

Anyway it's probably a good corrective when I have a day where I am confronted with the great usefulness meter that constituted by unexpected situations and one's readiness to deal with them, and the needle on the usefulness meter swings from sewing machine to houseplant as I step on the scale.

I think of myself as being on the front line sometimes, because I deal directly with clients and their families and the verkakte systems they have to deal with. But. I have carved out a niche for myself wherein I see a small swath of the systems part, and when I'm outside that niche, I can sometimes be rather helpless.

We have a calendar of who handles "ER" cases here when our supervisor isn't around, i.e. cases where the attorney needs a social worker right away rather than long-term. Today was my lucky day, and they called me over to the courthouse for an ER. I go into the court part and talk to the attorney for a second who says the thing I least like to hear, which is some form of "just talk to him for a minute and see what's going on with him." Answer in head: ok, I talked to him. He thinks the writing on Friday Night Lights has gotten a little slack but that Connie Britton's ability to inhabit her character and her improved accent as well as the ever elusive possibility that Matt and Landry might one day do it have become reason enough to lament its cancelation. Would you like to try again, and be a little more specific?

I got her to clarify that the guy seems to want to be hospitalized and that they might not set bail if we can make that happen. I talked to him in back hall after being sort of insistent with a court officer. "I'd like to be able to talk to him without whispering, ok?" He presented like your average falling-apart, probably mentally ill person. Not quite able to engage, in what feels like non-performed distress, and what I was once encouraged to include in progress notes under the relatively polite terminology "malodorous."

What next? Well, I had to call a colleague. Because the last time I was the person who had to have someone hospitalized was five years ago, and I simply didn't know how to go about it. The answer was: if they'll let him go, bring him back to the office, call 911 like you would any old time you want to hospitalize anyone, and wait. But I was all "does it need to be at a particular hospital? Do I escort the guy to an ER?" etc etc the answer to all of which, from the universe if not my colleague, was "no, and get a grip."

This is a basic thing. People are hospitalized all the time. Maybe there's some resistance in this, in that I think of hospitalization as running the risk of "warehousing" and also of putting a bandaid on the more systemic factors that mean people have to go to hospitals when they're not fitting nicely into the economy. But shut up, me. Doesn't matter. Being a social worker and not knowing some of these basic ins and outs is really not good. It's one of several things that should be reminding me that it's time to figure out whether I'm in or out, profession-wise.

So, that happened.

Oh hey so

Out of the depths of the interwaffle I have conjured or I suppose I should say begun conjuring a group blog on no particular topic. I haven't exactly given up on social work blogging but I think I am for the moment likelier to blog over there than here. I may actually blog about similar topics, but without the restriction of only writing about work-related things. Check it out if you're looking for new reading material. My friends, they are really smart and know many things. Let me show you them, or however that meme goes.