Dear(s) ... a Tough Day at the Office

Mornin. Everyone sleep ok? We’re doing ok, I think ... waking up early enough, but feel a little rushed. Maybe leftover feelings from the day before? Sometimes its hard to really take care of all the little self nurturing needs, before the next set presents itself. Hmm, see doesn’t that sound confusing?

Maybe we should get the coffee now? Hmm, hold on ... Ahh, that’s the ticket!

Hmm, so what’s next ... Birds are twittering and my virtual stream is running. Kitties have finished their breakfast and are trolliping. Funny kitties. Just doesn’t occur to them to be starting their morning, until they’ve made sure we’re up. I think they then take unadulterated pleasure in going "back to bed!"  That is until time-clock kitty starts pushing me out the door.  She says, "Get to work woman!"

We had a very long day yesterday. Maybe why we’re feeling a little zapped. There were a few things that happened, but by far and away the most concerting was that we had to prepare for, then host a long 5 1/2 hour inspection by the State of Illinois to certify nine clients for federal funding. Man-o-man ... just grueling!

The man who came out was nice enough, but he was very exacting. He only really looked at two reports within each of the client files up for inspection. He looked at ICAPs which are to discern the individuals adaptive and maladaptive behaviors. Then he looked at their "Psychologicals." Every individual that has a developmental disability has one. And, the standard rule is that it has to be checked every year and updated every five years.

Although, we get older people into the program, most of our individuals come into the program straight out of high school with a report from the school psychologist. So, we were in compliance with everyone having one, it’s just that the inspector found that four out of the nine individuals reports didn’t pass the grade of meeting federal standards. This was a vast improvement from the long point where he didn’t think any of them were going to pass.

Man, if you think this was going to create happy campers, you’d be mistaken. At first when the guy came in ... both Sister and I stayed with him in the new Activity room (where the staff and client laptops are set up). But after the first one ... shoot, just a whole lot of trouble. Sr. was not going to take this information sitting down. She was pretty angry because we’d passed all the other certifications with the same kind ofpsychologicals and we’d justpast the regular annual inspection from the State and CARF.

Our friend got involved too. I think his final statement on the situation was that ... it was going to shut us down. Not being able to have these people certified is a loss of $108,000 a year from a business that runs on about $450,000 a year. Sr. and our friend were all ready collaborating on whose attention to this matter they would need to connect to first. After the inspector scowled and shook his head over the first hour and two client files, Sr. figured she’d had enough of this to her blood pressure, so she left me to "sit" with him for the rest of the day on our own.

There were a couple of things that did help us out after a while. The first was that four of the clients were already in the process of getting new psychologicals because they were coming up to five years. Two of these we could get within a week with just the issue of getting family consents. Two of them, we still have to check for progress from the University.

The other part that helped was that the Inspector decided it was within his realm to call the high school we get most of our referrals from. We connected him first through the principal, then to the psychologist. She was able to convince him that the IQ they were using met federal standards. This helped some, but he still thought that there wasn’t enough information on the reports to qualify them all for reporting on adaptive behavior. He had three criteria out of six that needed to be met in the psychological reports. The criteria includes inability to 1) self care, 2) understand and the use of language, 3) learning, 4) mobility, 5) self-direction, 6) capacity for independent living.

All along there were questions to be answered and quite a bit of sitting across from him being prepared to answer questions or assure him that we were going to be calm, pleasant and not unappreciative of him doing his job. Shoot, we sure were appreciative that at about 1 pm, he was going to take a 20 minute lunch. Needed a break.

During the "visit" we kept Sr. updated, but after he went, we sat down in her office to survey the damage with her. There were calls and plans to be made. So the situation progressed, but everyone was pretty tired out. It had been a day of high pressure. Sr. retired to her convent and we took a break, had an apple, got some ice water and listened to some soft music. Hehe, it took a bit of effort to convince our mind we could still have a productive "evening" of work.

Most of that effort was in communication through our scheduler. There were 8 or 9 events that had happened before and after he got there and the event itself that we needed to get a hold of, plus the planning for the next day. Fortunately, after we turned ourselves over to this planning, we started to feel our normal calm and reassuring levels of involvement. In general, we are pretty efficient with our thoughts and skills.

One of the things we did as an aside that seemed like a pretty good deal was after having written about the event, we copied three long paragraphs to a Word document in the form of a memo to the other Q. I think that most often we’ve talked about this person in a rather negative light and in most cases she earns that position on her own. But, something is happening with our minds in that we are concentrating much more on efficiency and professionalism.

After a couple hours of the Inspector being there, we’d run into the other Q up at the copier machine. Apparently, she’s so out of things, that she hadn’t even realized he was in the building. She seemed pretty angry about that. She felt as if she should have been "notified." It hadn’t occurred to us to do this, because all 9 clients under certification were my clients and Sr. had then naturally set it up so I be working with him. The other Q. spouted off, "Well maybe I could have helped!"

At the time we thought roughly on this, because in reality, we knew that Sr. has been pretty definitely angered and frustrated with this persons abilities, knowledge and lack of professionalism. It was just a given. So, later when we were closing down our thoughts of the evening, we figured although we didn’t want her interfering with the actual process as it were happening, she really did have the right to know of the results, especially because a couple of the "slots" may be filled in with her clients. She had gone home early, but we’d checked her client files and a couple of her clients seemed potential candidates. We also thought she should be aware of the adaptive needs the federal government is now interested in.

We’ll see how that all washes over this morning. I’ll let Sr. know I gave the memo and ask her is she would like a copy. *Sigh*

I think that the day taught me a couple of things. First of all, it may have been due to Sr.’s compliments the day before, or just that I’m feeling more on top of things the last month, but in general we really are trying to improve our professionalism. It’s kinda hard! I think the first lesson is to listen more than speak, and when you ARE asked to speak, to have the proper information. Negative personal intonations count against!

I’ve actually learned this from the other Q., because 98% of the time, I hear her being asked to do something either from myself, Sr. or someone else ... she groans and moans like you’d just hit her in the stomach! It’s terrible. Due to this we’ve long since taken it upon ourselves to after having been given a new assignment, just to nod and say, "Yes, maam, I’ll take care of that" if there are no other further questions. Unfortunately, I haven’t been as good afterward when I hit the office or beyond to be complaining or fretting.

Now days, we’re absolutely "in love" with the sense of control we have in summarizing our daily events. We also love the ability of keeping everything close to "in mind." We’re doing a couple of things better now as to the process. Like we’ve gotten much better when we change events to mark down on a post-it a marker and the time. Instead of kinda sittin their thinking in our head, we are studying the words written for accuracy and conciseness. We used to have a lot of aimless moments where we found ourselves to be just staring off into the garden. I have a sense like I do when we’re writing here of re-focusing ourselves.

Even yesterday (after having been predominantly swamped with one issue), we were able to reflect later that these other events had happened. There was some follow up from many events, especially the ones where we had connected to other people. We found the follow-up is most likely necessarily of a smaller amount of time. Sort of the issue we’d raised earlier. There is no sense in going back to jump on beds. We want to train ourselves to progress the last progression. We feel its important for the staff or clients we worked with to have taken back control of their issues.

Another nice thing about the schedule is that while we weren’t able in the last hour or so to "get into" the bigger projects, we were able to bring a few smaller projects into completion, which seemed as easy as summer Sunday school by this time. Like we found ourselves making a medicine-taking schedule for one of the clients to use at home in .20 minutes and in .17 minutes completing an incident report for one of the clients from the day before. It was actually kind of fun.

There is a goofy notation in here, in that one of the things that is happening is we are much more apt to return our desks back over to order which includes walking up to the front offices more often to "take care" of business whether it be carrying out a message or task vocally or on paper. Keeps us in the swing, because we’re being "seen" more by both staff and clients.

I’m pretty sure that other people are enjoying that we’re more involved for brief moments of time. Maybe it helps them to feel they are progressing too. We try to make it a habit during most of the day to not be stopping to "gossip." That’s been longstanding and is our reputation. Hehe that is with the exception of our best female friend. She and I are pretty much alone right now as very good supporters to Sister, in that due to our abilities to work, the two of us are more often on her good list than bad. With her, I’ll give a few moments more to help or discuss some personal issues on how all things are going. We are also the only two that have been given overtime hours to work.

I know if she is having trouble collecting rent, or that her car broke down, she is going to be too frustrated to concentrate on her normal load of hard work. She knows if we’re angry or overwhelmed, we’re less efficient. Plus, just hurts to see her unhappy. She’s naturally one of those soul of the Earth type people. It’s kind of funny in one respect. In our agency she has as much respect for mopping floors or changing toilet papers than I have for one of the fancy reports. Love it! A lot of that is to Sr.’s credit. Everyone’s position is necessary and given equal attention.

Hmm, well ... I’ve gone on about a million and 6 yards again today. I’m really appreciative of those of you that keep coming back to read. I don’t know how interesting all our talk of work and such is, but you should know I take great honor in the process of doing it and am thrilled when you all leave comments. It was especially nice yesterday that you all could feel some relieve in being able to say, "Yay us!" Rather than "You need a break!" Hehe we’re a trying ... yep, and more money too!

Take care of the day ... we love you!!!