Thanks for participating in our visit to Esperanza today.
For those of you who could not make it - you were missed.
We ended our time together today with an exercise where each group had to create criteria for potential youth clients for your organization. From there you had to choose 8 youth from a pool of who fit your criteria. The reason why Tracy and I decided that this would be an appropriate exercise is because we wanted to make the youth as 'real' as possible. Our goal was to bring the people on the paper to life in hope of helping you understand what it is like to hold a person's life in your hands. Many of you seemed surprised when we came to the conclusion that even with the most horrifying case there never is a time where we should give up on an individual. We tend to make judgments solely on the offense that has been committed and tend to forget that each person has a story and there are many variables that need to be considered.
On another note, something that we did not discuss yet is the group dynamic. For any of you that may be considering starting your own organization or initiative, working with others towards a common goal is inevitable. I would like for you to reflect on how working with you group went today. Did you learn anything? Was it difficult to come to a consensus? Do you see any challenges that you might encounter? Tracy has pointed out to me that "Nobody builds an Esperanza alone and reaching a consensus is part of the process."
FYI: Tracy will be checking in on Tuesday to make comments and answer some questions!
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18 comments:
Christina, Jessica and myself worked well together. It was a little difficult hashing out criteria for our group and it was also difficult to choose individual youth who we thought desperately needed help. I tended to want to help those who committed more severe crimes and Jessica tended to favor individuals with lesser crimes. To me the ones with lesser crimes, the majority of them, were ok in terms of their family background. One of our criteria was that the youth had to have family or community ties, but we eventually—as a group—abandoned our own criteria and accepted those who committed more violent crimes—great team work ladies. It is definitely difficult to make these kinds of decisions especially ones that could drastically affect someone’s life. It sheds some light on the tough choices that organizations such as CASES and Esperanza have to make and I do not envy them for it.
Chad Out!
Chad-
What made it difficult for you to figure out the criteria? Also what made your group abandon the need for family or community ties?
Working with my group went well. I did learn that we tended to create a bias toward the crime the person had committed when choosing our eight youths. The more violent the offense committed tended to sway us to choose another person to incorporate into our “agency.” It was not difficult to come to a consensus. I believe the reason our group worked well to come to a consensus is because we all contributed to the criteria on which we would base our decision of which youths to incorporate into our “agency.” I think the only problem that I would face is dealing with my own prejudices and prejudgments of a person who committed an offense and not knowing their entire history.
Joe-
It seems like your group worked well together because you guys compromised on the criteria so that everyone had contributed something that they felt strongly about. I was quite impressed with your group. You guys not only worked quickly, but I noticed that you had established a 'check' and 'x' system. I overheard you say "Well he gets a check for going to school and a check for have family ties".
I also think that the last sentence of your blog is interesting. Yesterday I had a conversation with some of my family members and they were talking about how if a person commits a horrendous crime they should be put to death no questions asked. Considering the trip to Esperanza and the exercise we had just done, this caught my attention. You are not alone in having trouble with prejudgement without knowing the entirety of the story.
I think Joe, Professor Stein and I did work well together, though like Joe said we had to work through our own personal biases. I was a bit disheartened at the end since we were unsure as to whether or not we could disqualify people for positive reasons, as I would not have taken those two girls who shoplifted something petty since I too thought they're offenses were so minor they would be discharged.
Working at CJA I, and aspiring to be a lawyer who will eventually have to look at the facts and not the person frequently, i believe that it is sometimes easy to lose sight of the human being behind the crime. One looks at the crime, sees: this is what happened so a) we can help you or b) we can not help you. If you qualify for what we seek to do then you are in luck, otherwise fend for yourself. Such strict guidelines are often hindering to many, yet is sometimes unavoidable as an overly-wide cast net could create more problems than solutions.
Combining the aims of the agency as well as overcoming the personal prejudices of the individuals running the agency is, I believe, the two most likely sources of problems. One coordinator may seek help from child services, another may detest it, a third demands that a certain crime bars a person from qualifying for the program and in the end everyone is up in arms against each other. I am sure that Esperanza has remained successful by never losing sight of whom they seek to ultimately help: their kids.
I enjoyed working in my group. It was not enough time for us to come up with the criteria that influenced our decisions who should we chose. The reason might be that it was difficult to decide what criteria we should follow because we wanted to help almost everyone (especially Prof. Waterston). As a result, we excluded those who committed the most severe crimes and used weapons. Even though we excluded Natalie (a girl that stabbed her sister’s boyfriend), I felt that she needed our help. She was only thirteen and her family had a history of an abusive relations that she was a witness to (her dad abused her mom). Therefore, as Katie said “each person has a story and there are many variables that need to be considered” while making any decision. As I want to thank Esperanza that help me understood how difficult it was to make those decisions.
I love your mentors, Katie!!!
I think that my group worked well because we let everyone have a word on the criteria and actual individual. It was difficult turning down some kids, and I can imagine how difficult it is for Esperanza to choose or reject certain cases. I respect what Esperanza does for these kids!
I have not stopped thinking about the exercise we did and the feedback we received from Jenny. I did see my prejudices in stark relief; most particularly I can see how my disciplinary training (postdoctoral work on Bellevue’s child and adolescent ward) influenced my choices in ways that might be quite at odds even with my own beliefs about rehabilitation. And my role as the Vera advisor also influenced my decision-making in less than admirable ways. I’ll tell you how.
I was trained in risk assessment for violence. When I was trained, arson and rape were considered two of the more serious priors in terms of the potential for repeat violent offenses. These two crimes were particularly pathologized when committed by juveniles; their commission was often indicative of a history of extremely severe childhood abuse and neglect and/or serious psychiatric problems. So, the bias in my training would lead me to see nothing short of residential long-term treatment as possibly curative for these adolescents. Thus, when confronted with the cases at Esperanza, I automatically excluded them from my community based program. When Jenny laughed and said she treated kids with priors like that all the time, I was awakened from my preconceived ideas about treatability (which I did not even know that I had.)
Secondly, running Vera has gotten me so used to serving multiple masters (students, administrators, agencies, donors) that I am always thinking in terms of markers of success. In the Esperanza type scenario, of course, if you take kids who are less troubled, your “success” rates will be higher and you will attract more donors, stay in business longer, and ultimately help more kids. Always chasing those kinds of successes obviously can undermine your commitment to helping those who most need help. So here is my first question for Tracy:
How does Esperanza juggle these sometimes contradictory needs, to help the neediest and yet hit program goals, to balance risk and safety?
And, if you do not mind, I am sure the students would love to hear your personal story (at least the parts appropriate for the Web!)
Reading these comments makes me so sad that I missed the trip to Esperanza. Thanks so much to Katie and her wonderful mentors for putting this on. Next year!
My question for Tracy -- and for all of you -- is about comparisons and contrasts between the culture at Esperanza and your agency's culture. So much of what you were asked to do and think about had to do with collaborative work and working between and within communities. Everything I've heard about Esperanza seems to underscore the importance of creating an environment that supports collaboration on many levels. What is the culture at your own agency and how does it work (or not0 with the agency's mission. This is a particular shout-out to Chad, who works with a similar client population, and Jamie, who wrote in so briefly and who also works with clients that in many cases are still within communities where violence has taken place.
The question for Tracy would be: how aware are you and your colleagues of the workplace culture at Esperanza? Is it a priority to think about it and work on it? If so, how does an organization go about doing that?
First, thank you Katie! Thank you Tracy! And thank you Jenny (sp?)!
Our day at Esperanza was truly amazing, and I loved the exercise that Katie and Tracy developed for us. For me the exercise revealed that there is something “in” every single one of those kids—once you think about it—that can be worked with, that can be an entry point for transformation. How can we just “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” if it is true that every human being has the capacity for good and for evil, and has the potential to change, to do better? All this takes me back to Christina and her very profound understanding that if we truly want bad stuff not to happen, then we need to go back a few giant steps and re-imagine a social world that would produce fewer (not so many) such cases as the ones we studied at Esperanza. We need to take seriously Christina’s call to think about prevention and what needs to happen in order that prevention can truly take place. We can’t just think about prevention in the abstract or dismiss it as useless idealism. If we don’t take up the call to deal with prevention, than (wonderful) places like Esperanza will always have to be there to play catch-up—to try to catch those who are falling. As our exercise demonstrated, organizations like Esperanza can’t catch them all—even though all of them could/would/should qualify. My question for Tracy and any of the Esperanza staff is: what kind of social change do you think is necessary that would have a substantive impact on “prevention”?
Katie great exercise today! That was great and I am so glad that I understand the difficulty and time it takes to choose from a pile of people this agency is bound to help in the long run. It's like Lenny's internship and giving the second chance to others.
My group was fine, I must disagree however with Chad that I chose "those with weaker crimes" I strongly felt I chose those who did harsh crimes (Omar- Rape/ the girl who committed arson when she had nothing better to do, and others). However, I believe this group process was challenging yet rewarding. Challenging because everyone has a different mindset on who should be given a second chance (depending on their criteria). Because of the many differences I felt we had to defend certain people compared to others to prove a point.
While I must say this experience was fun, it takes a lot of time and reasoning to choose who will come and those who didn't.
Overall, this question is for those who work in Esperanza doing this: how difficult is it to choose potential participants and do your ideals sometimes conflict with other co-workers? If so, how do you cope with these differences in ideals?
The next few posts are from Tracy Barker of Esperanza.
First, I would like to say that I am thrilled to see that a morning at Esperanza has generated so many great questions. I think it is an important part of our roles as mentors to highlight some of the complexities you will face when you leave the protective atmosphere of the classroom. If you don’t have a solid understanding of what you stand for and what you will never compromise about, it can become challenging to hold onto your most deeply held principles. As Dr. Stein points out, one day you will have to balance serving the clients most in need with meeting your own professional goals, paying the bills, and keeping your doors open. And just when you think, “That’s it. I’ve had enough,” you will remember that people came to work for you because they believe in you and your mission, and you have a responsibility to these dedicated staff members as well. So if you are thinking of holding a position like Jenny’s one day, you have to make some decisions pretty early on about the points on which you will never compromise. I suggest doing this before the challenges begin, because it will be much harder to remember why you got started when you are already in the middle of a crisis. I don’t expect anyone to have those answers right this minute, but I do hope you will all start thinking about these personal principles.
More from Tracy:
As Katie mentioned, I also wanted to draw your attention to the group/consensus aspect of the exercise. When people of different backgrounds come together, it can become difficult to agree on anything, but it can also help you make more informed decisions because each of you is bringing a different area of experience to the table. This is not unlike the work of a jury. Did it feel to any of you like you were sitting in judgment over the actions of others? I hope that made you a little uncomfortable. The first question every social service agency has to answer is, “Who are we going to serve?” Unless you have infinite staff and resources, that makes question number two: “Who is going to be left out?” These are tough questions, and it’s probably a good thing if they make you feel conflicted. I think that’s how you know you are in the right line of work. Balancing the ideals of wanting to help everyone with the reality of your limits will be a career-long struggle. The only way to make any headway in that battle is to listen to a variety of perspectives from your professional peers and learn from every experience to help you make more informed decisions. This will help you answer tough questions like, “Who is the right client,” “Who can we serve best?” and “Who must we (humbly) admit can be better served by another agency?”
Still Tracy:
So I hope that addresses some of the issues raised by Chad, Nadiya, and Jaime regarding the difficulties of making these choices. To those of you who raised concerns about your personal biases against certain crimes and the need to really see the whole person and not just their offense, I would say that it’s important to never stop thinking about this issue. It’s easy to become complacent after a while in a certain field and forget to really examine yourself and your approach to the work. I can understand where you are coming from, Alex, when you talk about focusing on the facts rather than the person. I come from a legal background myself, and sometimes it’s easy to get into the habit of looking at legal problems in a kind of calculated mathematical way. This is especially true when you’re overburdened with work. But I think this gets us back to the importance of making informed decisions. If we want to reach the right conclusions—even legal conclusions—we have to consider the human elements of the offense, and that includes a person’s history (criminal and otherwise). In fact, if I had to improve our exercise at all, that is one variable I would add: some detail about each youth’s juvenile justice background (just like we provided their family background).
On the issue of prevention (raised by Christina via Prof. Waterston), well that’s the big one isn’t it? We all want to see a world in which there is no need for Esperanza or any other program like it. I think Jenny might have touched on this a little in her presentation. Can we find a way to offer prevention without catching too many families in the net (I think she used the word spotlight)? At the same time, can we provide voluntary social services for families who express a need for them but cannot afford to pay? As Jenny points out, families of means don’t have to wait for a problem to spiral out of control before they can receive therapy. I don’t have a lot of answers here—just f questions. Maybe the class has some thoughts on this as the social justice engineers of the future?
From Tracy:
Now, to change directions a bit, I want to take a quick stab at Professor Reitz’s question regarding collaboration and agency culture. I’ve always found this kind of tone to be set by the leadership in any workplace; there really is no better way to encourage people to work together than for a director or manager to start things off. This is certainly the case at Esperanza, as well as between Esperanza and other agencies. I’m curious to learn whether the Fellows have had similar experiences at their sites. There is also, of course, a certain relaxed feel to Esperanza’s office. While this is certainly great for the mental health of our staff, think about how it affects clients when they come to the office for a visit. Some of them don’t spend much time in the part of the city where we are located, and some of them are used to trying to have their counseling sessions in a small apartment filled with people (and/or pets!). Try to imagine their experience when they walk in the front door of our quiet office with all those mellow colors…
Tracy's final thoughts:
And now, in response to Dr. Stein’s question, a little about me: I am Esperanza’s Education Specialist. It’s hard to explain what my role is unless you first try to imagine some of the difficulties our youth face when it comes to education. Here are some examples: (1) the 16-year old who cannot read; (2) the student who was released from detention with probation conditions saying he cannot miss a day of school but when he tries to re-enroll the school threatens to call the police if he walks through the front door; (3) the 17-year old who has been in high school for three years with a transcript saying he is in the 11th grade but he only has enough credits for the 9th grade; and (4) the student who is afraid to return to her school because other students there are threatening to harm her. Esperanza’s Field Counselors will attempt to address all of these school problems and more, and I am their in-house source of information on how they can do so. Together we find tutors for Student Number 1; remind schools of their legal obligation to serve Student Number 2; we have the difficult conversation that Student Number 3 would have had with his guidance counselor two years ago if his school wasn’t over-crowded and under-staffed; and we make sure Student Number 4 is aware of her legal right to change schools and the procedure involved. I was discussing my background with Dr. Stein after your visit on Thursday, and she thought it would be interesting to share it with you so that you’ll all start to think about the flexibility of certain degrees. I have a B.A. in sociology from Boston University and a J.D. from Georgetown Law. Who knew I’d end up working in the field of education? I want to encourage all of you to think outside the box a little when it comes to your professional futures.
Lastly, I want to say that Jenny and I had a lot of fun on Thursday. She won’t admit it, but I think you drew a little of Jenny’s inner professor out into the open. Good job, class!
I would like to thank all of the ladies that took time out to make our visit at Esperanza such a success.
The activity was so helpful because it let us be in the shoes of people who are faced with the challenge of judging, assessing, categorizing, and helping those in need, all from some sheets of paper. I felt an immense sense of power, helplessness, and guilt simultaneously. I felt so powerful knowing that my decisions, my preconceived notions, my definition of a person not worthy of saving, was to determine someone's entire future. I felt helpless because although I wanted to help them all, I had to choose, and leaving anybody behind feels so wrong. This is where the guilt set in, knowing that someone's chances of survival were placed in my hands, and I chose not to save them. I felt like that seen in "The Good Son" (if anyone has seen it), when she is hanging at the edge of the cliff with two boys in her hand, one her own son, and knowing that she cant get up with both of them in her hands, she must decide in seconds which one she would save. How can you choose which child is worth saving? Mind you, this was all hypothetical and we were reading from papers. Imagine if those children were in front of us making their case; would I be able to choose? I don't think so.
The day was great and very informative, however, something was missing and no one has mentioned it. Where were the kids? Maybe I didn't get the memo, but I was expecting to come in and see a bunch of kids doing what kids do. But the place was unusually quiet, and there must have been a reason for this. I was a bit disappointed that I did not get to meet any of the teens, but if we had, I am sure we would have never had such a productive day.
Thanks again.
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