dearneighbors.com

The Flint Hills Chapter of the ARC has left Rossville now that the demand for our services has declined. The Topeka chapter (cough) will manage the few requests that emerge.

Now that I'm back in the saddle of being an extension specialist, I won't be recording much more in this journal. I will return and post once I have a better perspective of time. I am looking forward to working on the new program that is slowly emerging from the crisis, one that focuses on bringing families in crisis together with local families prepared to help. You can read about it at http://www.dearneighbors.com.

I am not impressed with Red Cross management we have seen out of Topeka. If you, the reader, are thinking about volunteering, ask someone who has been in the system about the person in charge. Does this person work well under pressure? Does this person really care about families going through crisis or is the person "all hat and no horse." We are fortunate in our chapter to have a young leader who has really stepped up and shown great qualities of leadership. I hope he rises high in the Red Cross.

Thanks for reading. I'll be back when I have a better perspective on my experience, when my bitterness toward the incompetence in Topeka has faded. What I remember the most over the last five weeks are the large number of brave and determined families from the Gulf Coast who passed through our office. I need to embrace that memory when thoughts about the wine and brie types who are officed in Topeka intrude. At some point, I will hope for accountability within the wonderful American Red Cross.

The qualities of leadership (Lesson 7)

We are entering a new phase in the Gulf Coast crisis. Thousands of residents remain in shelters and are getting tired and cranky about their living conditions. The initial surge of volunteers have returned to their jobs and former lives (three weeks is the max for Red Cross volunteers), the media reports have shifted too away from dramatic rescues to disgruntled citizens complaining about their assistance. The new volunteers we send to the south are facing different circumstances from the first wave.

We are tapped out in our Red Cross chapter, especially with the lack of support by Topeka Red Cross in a flood near their city that we have managed. We have run out of volunteers and the old-timers are at a breaking point. At the national level, there are no more concert benefits so we all are afraid of Red Cross running out of money. Our administrator is very sick and has been told by his doctor to stay in bed. So it’s tough in the office now.

This is exactly at the point where true leadership is needed in Red Cross across the country. The word “inspire” comes from the Latin meaning “breathe life into.” We have faith in and a strong connection and allegiance to the Director of Operations of our Flint Hills (Manhattan) chapter and worry about his health but no faith in the administrators above him. He deserves better. Their (Topeka Red Cross) lack of support for our efforts in Rossville is shameful (more on this in a future entry).

Imagine how hard it is to be an administrator in an organization of volunteers. The Red Cross has a powerful brand that attracts volunteers, and the work is incredibly important. But at some point, volunteers will quit if the crisis reveals a frustrating inadequacy of those in leadership. I guess that’s the effect of all crises.

Approaching the end of the beginning

Well, I'm ready to pull back. I've worked about 208 hours as a Red Cross case manager over the last four and a half weeks. For the last few days I have had to use vacation leave. Everything is stacked up on my desk, bills have been left unpaid. I've managed to keep up with most of my online course on anger management. I have a keynote speech and a storytelling concert to do next week that I have not prepared for. So I am ready to take a long pause with Red Cross. I'll get my batteries recharged and then go on-call when I can spare the time.

I still have families with my cell number who are going to call needing help and I have one especially needy family I met last night that I need to find help (where in the Hades is Topeka??? I could have really used their help with this family.)

I feel sad though. We are now in the first week of responding to this flood in northeast Kansas. The case management is light years more difficult than helping the Katrina/Rita families because we have to make judgments about financial payments. This is very difficult and the lack of objective criteria is open to inconsistency.

Yesterday, another exhausted case manager was working with a client about 8:00 pm after 12 hours of working with families in this community’s church facility. This client was very upset (yes, *very* upset) that she didn’t get as much money as another family. I don’t want to say any more than this, except to point out that the case manager was the person I admire the most and has a great deal of experience. She was very tired. I visited with the family member as well, and might have made my coworker’s task more difficult. I still feel comfortable with how I dealt with her, but I think my manner upset my friend who was feeling more violated and combative toward the client (remember, think “fatigue”).

We are short on case managers, the need is great by a large number of families lining up for assistance (some of them unhappy with us), we are working near Topeka and we have no assistance from anyone from the Topeka Red Cross office to help us refer clients to resources in Topeka (a city with more than five times the population of Manhattan). The process of helping these families is light years more difficult than what we faced with hurricane families when they arrived here in Manhattan.

So I feel bad about slipping away from this work and will be thinking about my experienced colleague (retired and without other obligations) who is left with only a few other inexperienced case managers dealing with a complicated circumstance. I would have liked to be in a position where I could have stopped at the “end” of this challenge. I look forward to coming back to Red Cross in the future.

We have shifted now into a very different circumstance, a new phase in the crisis involving the entire range of challenges we have been facing that will require a dramatic shift in management for both shelter workers and case managers. I’ll talk about that in another entry to this journal.

What happened to Topeka?

When it rains, it pours.

Rossville, a small community near Topeka, Kansas, flooded on Sunday from heavy rains to its north. We set up a shelter on Sunday. Three other volunteers manned it Sunday night/Monday morning. I volunteered (Can a volunteer volunteer?) to stand watch all night. Since the shelter is open all night someone has to be available to serve as security, greet anyone needing shelter, and check out anyone who decides to leave. I’ll talk more about that experience in another entry because I need to record something more frustrating. I also have to rush because I am returning this morning to work all day as a volunteer case manager in Rossville. (I now have to use vacation leave for volunteering.)

Why am I feeling grumpy? All the volunteers who are running the shelter, conducting damage assessment of the homes, conducting case management, are all from Manhattan. Rossville is very close to Topeka and both are in Shawnee county. Rossville is the responsibility of Topeka Red Cross. Topeka has at least four times the population of Manhattan and serves as the area office (not sure the names Red Cross uses). Topeka is much closer to Rossville than Manhattan.

So what’s frustrating? The person in charge of Topeka Red Cross is the supervisor of our Flint Hill’s (Manhattan) chapter administrator. Topeka does not appear to be contributing anything to the response to these families. Note that I use the word “appear.” From my lowly in-the-trenches perspective of a volunteer, they could be contributing some hidden effort. I’ve been there, so it must be really hidden. Manhattanites have to drive 45 miles to a town that is ten miles outside of a chapter with a population more than four times the size of Manhattan.

I wonder how the administrator for the Topeka Red Cross would respond to these questions? I ask these questions as a normal citizen and resident of Manhattan. I am not representing (and never have in this Blog or elsewhere) the Flint Hills Chapter of the Red Cross. I have not discussed these questions with anyone in our chapter.

Why does the chapter of a relatively small community like Manhattan, Kansas, have to carry the responsibility for managing this crisis in Rossville instead of the chapter in which Rossville is located?

Where are the Topeka case managers, shelter supervisors, damage assessors?

How many volunteer hours has the Topeka chapter generated over the last month?

How many volunteers has the Topeka chapter sent to the Gulf Coast?

How many volunteers has the Topeka chapter trained?

How many Gulf Coast families has the Topeka chapter processed?

How many Gulf Coast families have been given shelter by the Topeka chapter?

Please, don’t get me wrong. Yes, I’m tired and feeling grumpy at the moment. Even so, I’m looking forward to visiting with Rossville families as a volunteer for the Red Cross today. I am eager to help because they are fellow Kansans. Driving around in the Red Cross truck at 11:00 pm on Sunday night and talking with residents of Rossville and police officers was wonderful (more on that in another entry). We are there because these families need us, regardless of the chapter where we are located.

But the load would be easier to carry if our big brother would lend a helping hand.

A place of safety

What a busy week this was. We had a large number of families arrive from Louisiana and Texas.

One of my clients was a helping professional. She and her husband had just arrived with her extended family from the Louisiana coast. After about 45 minutes of talking and completing our forms, I handed them the Red Cross credit/debit card and told them how much they would receive. As I went over the rules and limitations for its use, she suddenly stopped and looked at me with a pained face. “I don’t know when we will be able to pay this back,” she told me. (The phrase “credit card” can be misleading and is not really appropriate for what they are.) “No, I said, this money is a gift from all the American people who care. This is not money from the government. And you do not have to pay any of it back.”

As we approached completion of our time together, the woman began to cry. Here she was, being a good soldier and shepherding this extended family of three households to a place of safety. Her home is gone. But everyone is together and healthy. She could finally relax. As she relaxed, she could afford the experience of her emotions and the memory of the people she had worked with who had lost contact with her. The moment of arriving at a place of safety, she would have to face the emotions that bubble up from the deeper parts of her heart. Red Cross will provide that place of safety for her, for up to two weeks (and possibly a little longer) and bring her into contact with organizations that will provide her and her family with free clothing and food.

Now is her time to nurture herself to gain strength for the difficult challenge ahead for herself, her family, and her profession when she returns home.

Future blog entries:

Who’s been naughty and who’s been nice?
Fractured stereotypes