If You Want To Do Right, You Have To Be Responsible

I give up. I'm tired. This is bullshit. Wave the white flag, sign the god-damn Potsdam agreement. Bring in the foreign ministers, to hell with the hinterland. flush it all down the toilet...

One of the things about bleeding hearts is that they are ridiculously inefficient as a means of intervention. One bleeding heart social worker will spend hours a week with a manipulative, needy, insatiable client, at the expense of those several clients that really need/could use/are deserving of social work intervention.

If you want to change the system, then you have to be efficient. You have to be able to say "no" you have to be able to define who it is you are supposed to work with and who it is that doesn't meet your criteria. There's a huge difference between someone that's totally jacked up, desperate, needy and has a bunch of issues, and someone that you can actually help. Sometimes they aren't the same person.

People want all kinds of things. If you are a professional, then it's your job to find out what they NEED. Not what they WANT. We are not here to take dictation from folks that have proven themselves to be train wrecks.

and everything comes at a price. If we give, then we must "get". behaviors have to change. some different pattern must be engaged. there must be accountability.

This is what is meant by "responsible". If you want to do right, then it's more than being a bleeding heart, and handing out endless band aids. We're teaching folks to fish, and helping those that can't fish for themselves.

it is becoming increasingly difficult with profit motive putting so much pressure on the system, changing the game, using new terminology, new goals, new missions, new philosophies an definitions.

it is our role, as social workers, to wade through this morass, make sense of it, and bring order to it. But you can't be a bleeding heart.

Whether you work in the medical, mental health, health care, benefits, housing, drug treatment... no matter. As social workers, we must be every mindful as well as armed with our knives to cut through the veils of illusion, to get to that which is real. Name it, sustain it and turn it loose.