Deferrals and walk-aways - but at what cost?
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Eeesh…
Credit: New Opportunities, Inc., Iowa HHS
Deferrals and walk-aways - but at what cost?
While I’m sure we’re not proud of the fact, most of us have walked into a home and thought, “I’ve got to find a reason to cancel this inspection and get out of this place as quickly as possible.” Carpets made of animal feces, hoarded possessions like canyon walls, mountains of garbage, on-going cockroach and bedbug conventions, leaking roofs and flooded basements, bats in the belfrey, actual nazis, or just a client who has proven they excel at being a pain in the…whatever the reason, justifiable or not, I’m sure all of us have done it. It’s a perfectly reasonable and human thing to do. It’s self-preservation.
Sometimes this job feels like Mission: Impossible. Sometimes it looks like it too…
Credit: SCKEDD, KHRC
That said, the decision to walk away from a project is a serious one and should be made with intent, and only after due diligence and deliberation. Our program or organization's policies are usually put in place to protect the client, the organization, their staff, contractors, or the program itself. However, choosing to defer and walk away from a dangerous home like the one pictured above (and the one with the scary water heater and the wall held together by a “mold-like substance”) for the “greater good” of protecting an amazing and powerful program like WAP can have dire consequences as well. The difference is that the consequences are shown on the front page of the local newspaper, not the national one.
So, then we have to ask ourselves an age-old question: what is to be done?
I can say with certainty that I have undertaken projects that I knew I would regret because the client was in desperate need of help. Sometimes it worked out alright, and I slept well knowing I did the (mostly) right thing to help a fellow human. Sometimes it turned into a living nightmare that dragged on for months and left me fearing for my job, but you know what?
I still slept well.
Rules are often necessary and sometimes hard. They’re put in place to protect people. That’s why it’s so important to know them and, perhaps most importantly, to be involved in their development. So, the next time you hear about a committee meeting to have hard conversations about how your program runs, I hope you’ll volunteer. Because you’re either in the kitchen or you’re on the menu.
And we’re all already just one bad day away from being an appetizer.
Thanks to everyone out there making these hard choices. I trust that, despite the challenges, you’re sleeping well knowing that your work makes life better for people who matter…even when it makes your life a little more complicated.
-C
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