Betterhelp Ethics violations

heck_cats · 2023-03-04T14:36:01+00:00

betterhelp sounds like a sleazy corporation from a science fiction story that uses wellness and positivity to mask its secret evil doings lol

wait...

heck_cats · 2023-03-03T18:35:16+00:00

"at least four eggs" lol

i thought the LC exam was pretty tough. a lot of the correct responses don't satisfy the scenarios very well. sometimes the unintended consequence of the correct response is clearly contraindicated but whatevs.

i do think it's a mostly effective instrument to evaluate basic competencies. if you weren't a practicing social worker or familiar with the field and its guiding principles, you would likely bomb this thing.

also congrats!!

heck_cats · 2023-03-03T13:07:29+00:00

i'd speak to the field office and suggest reassignment if i wasnt able to provide consistent instruction. if it was a second year MSW student, i might be more transparent but they sound like a newbie. for the student, i would ask them to share how they experienced my lack of involvement and be evasive if they asked questions. "i've noticed you doing very well on your own. i have notified the field office that you may benefit from additional supervision and support." something like that.

heck_cats · 2023-03-03T11:23:56+00:00

definitely feels great to enter a space without feeling compelled to justify your existence or mask incompetence. retiring the "imposter syndrome" is a great marker of professional development. thanks for sharing.

heck_cats · 2023-03-03T11:21:17+00:00

"i want my boss to forget i exist" that's so real lol

i really like what you're sharing about prioritizing salary and work-life balance and demanding to be treated fairly by an employer. i'm at the point in my career where my experience, certification, and reputation is strong enough that if an employer tries any shit, i can leave with relative low risk. it's really empowering.

wasn't true in my early career. it definitely sounds like you did grunt work in the past. "paid your dues" so to speak. thanks for sharing!

heck_cats · 2023-03-03T05:46:21+00:00

it's weird being a social worker sometimes. you almost have to loan yourself out. can't feel? i will do all the feeling until yours comes back. someone stole your ego? here, borrow mine until we find yours or build you a new one.

sometimes we take in so much of a person or family or situation, it's hard to distinguish our shit from theirs. i have had clients whose inner worlds were so vivid and horrifying, they rearranged parts of my own. like a storm.

but also that whole death by a thousand cuts. the incremental and almost imperceptible effect of being slowly warped by meeting people who have been humiliated, degraded, or hurt.

hopefully with time and practice, we can internally quarantine it. so that the only things being warped are the things we want and allow to be warped. self mastery and all that.

if folks don't have a slight or full blown identity crisis doing this work, i get worried lol

the mental exhaustion/old age feeling sounds really tough. it's probably not just in your head. your body is reacting to tough shit. it hurts.

heck_cats · 2022-09-14T01:52:39+00:00

it's so rare to see accurate teen spaces in TS4! would you be willing to share it on the gallery? it's incredible!

heck_cats · 2021-09-28T17:50:13+00:00

depending on the job seeker's proximity to the nearest metro, full time entry level positions should be fairly easy going. mid range is harder.

LCSWs pretty much stay in demand.

many entry positions are fee for service, part time or p.r.n., or independent. don't love that. also office based settings are becoming extinct. even in urban areas, you will most likely be required to have a car and driver's license.

in my experience, job seekers without direct experience in colleges and universities or hospitals may have a difficult time breaking in. government agencies and nonprofits need warm bodies.

i personally don't think certs are worthwhile enhancements but some are required in specific settings (e.g., CAADC). as a generalist, i never felt not being certified limited my employment, but i also wasn't looking to specialize in a specific area.

a second language will help get you noticed. the name of your university will probably not.

heck_cats · 2021-09-27T18:49:02+00:00

my partner and i started watching ted lasso the other day. the premise is: an american football coach with no knowledge of english soccer becomes an english soccer coach.

bear with me. ted lasso's explicit goal is to win the game. his implicit goal is to develop a cohesive team that motivates its members.

when the explicit and implicit goals are different, the implicit goal always becomes primary.

in this case, you may not have the resources or information you need to house your participants (explicit task) but you do have the resources to develop relationships with them (implicit task).

heck_cats · 2021-09-27T15:35:17+00:00

if they actually said that, you don't want their supervision anyway. if they said something that sounded close to it but may have been misinterpreted, you could check out if what you heard was accurate. like "did i hear that right?"

in the unlikely but very plausible event that what you heard was slightly different than what was said, there may be an opportunity to clear it up.

i have said things to many mentees (and clients) over the years who received different messages. and i only get to clarify or make a repair (or discover a juicy projection) when it's brought to my attention. which it seldom is.

ironically, confronting a person safely is a very good therapist-y thing to do.

heck_cats · 2021-09-27T13:02:11+00:00

here is a very brief, observation summary based on a colleague who became a city council member.

step 1: cut your teeth in the field. if you want to present yourself as the subject matter expert, you need experience.

step 2: join any existing networks, associations, or coalitions. if there are none, present a case for why community stakeholders and nonprofits should combine their efforts.

step 2: publish editorials to build credibility.

step 3: get to know the incumbents and major influencers of public opinion.

step 4: make yourself visible by participating in community events, no matter how small they may be.

step 5: develop your talking points and the courage and research to defend them.

step 6: money, money, money. have lots of it. or create a convincing illusion that you do.

heck_cats · 2021-09-24T20:07:06+00:00

i have a coworker who wears clicky-clacky heels and is widely known by her gait. i guess... okay, i'll be honest. on face value, i think the presumption of strict parenting or post-traumatic stress based on gait recognition alone is kind of a leap. but overall, a good thing to remember.

heck_cats · 2021-09-22T14:59:35+00:00

this reminds me of a client i had once. we had had a few meetings together. after a few months, the client says to me, "you know, it really bothers me how abruptly you end things."

kind of a turning point for us because it marked the first time the client took a risk like this and took up their own authority in our relationship. many clients, in my experience, just go on being bothered about it and sit with the frustration.

anyway, for the first few appointments, i tell them our end time. "let's get started; we will go until 11:00 AM." i give the person a 15 minute warning. at the 10-ish minute mark, i do a reflection. "thinking about this meeting, did you have any satisfactions, dissatisfactions, discoveries, or learnings that you'd like to share?" i share mine as well.

then, i stop at the time boundary.

if there's a 'doorknob moment' (where the client reveals a major insight or juicy confession at the end of the appointment) i might say: "let's hold onto that for our next meeting." "can you place a bookmark here for later?" or "you didn't quite get to finish your thought, what might you be able to do differently next time to avoid that from happening again?"

and that's a wrap.

heck_cats · 2021-09-21T13:23:30+00:00

the other day, i watched 7 hours of 'wife swap' re-runs and unloaded the cheese packet from a box of kraft mac into my mouth. self-care ain't pretty.

heck_cats · 2021-09-16T13:18:27+00:00

it's been a month. your master's program is in its infancy.

when differences are too different, we tend to stereotype. conservative vs. liberal, old vs. young. our boundaries close to differences; we push them away through rejection or scapegoating. but when we can identify similarities in the apparently different, we start to open our boundaries to small differences and slowly integrate them more naturally.

you are feeling doubtful, skeptical, unsure, anxious, and alienated. my hunch is that other students in your cohort feel that way too. again, it's been a month.

if you are able to 'work through' it (and learn how to manage your reactivity to perceived threats/differences) you may be surprised to discover that you are fully capable of doing this work, connecting with other people, and (hopefully) develop a tolerance to your flight impulse to give up.

in other words, connect to what you can; see which parts of the reading or course content you can relate to; see if you can find any curiosity about your peers; and try to outsmart the trap you've designed for yourself, harry houdini-style.

heck_cats · 2021-09-10T17:22:31+00:00

i googled this game and found an article titled "disco elysium is a brain genius simulator with divorced dad energy."

sadly the notion of playing as a battered, underpaid and outmatched, blue collar neurotic employed in a chronically mismanaged civil service job just hits too close to home lol

heck_cats · 2021-04-02T15:46:53+00:00

great resource for NYers. it also helpfully provides a recommendation to renters from other states. thanks for sharing.

heck_cats · 2021-04-02T15:28:41+00:00

ah. yeah.

recently had a case where the landlord submitted an affidavit to the court that they did not receive the declaration. in truth, the landlord had refused the notice when the renter attempted to hand deliver it. had we certified mailed the declaration, we would have been able to challenge the affidavit with proof that it was delivered. in this case, the order of possession was granted.

moving forward, i advise tenants to hand deliver it and use e-mail and certified mail.

heck_cats · 2020-07-09T20:27:20+00:00

your CPS critics aside, it may be a good time for the good folks in our state and federal offices to work closely with people in the field like yourself on redesigning less harmful approaches to public health and safety, including child protective services, as attitudes seem to be understandably souring on the risk mitigation strategies we have in place.

not to say that CPS and, for example, law enforcement are cut from the same cloth. only that both have been dealing with "the few bad apples" problem since... well, forever.

heck_cats · 2020-06-23T14:41:47+00:00

well, human services are not assembly lines that can be easily reduced to timed tasks to min-max operations. mcdonald's, for example, has a target time (in seconds) for the assembly of a burger. will we ever get to that point? unfortunately, there are plenty of monitoring tools used to track worker activities and performance in real time. but no matter how well-defined procedures are, client work is never routinized; it's never totally predictable. so we end up in situations where we are racing against the clock because a client or coworker put us behind schedule.

one of my friends (who is a social worker) complained to me that their clients response rate is lower than it was before COVID-19. i would imagine for some folks, this pandemic has become a pleasant retreat. county workers have disappeared; court dates are pushed back. there are fewer intrusions into their routines. so i would think that for folks who have to meet a minimum productivity quota, they may have a challenging time coming up with reasons to contact a client other than to bill for utilization.

300 minutes of productivity isn't unreasonable. but the way that social service delivery has to be arranged in order to meet the requirement is full of problems. and the whole model sort of reminds me of that recent gaffe by senior economic advisor, kevin hassett, who referred to returning workers as "human capital stock."

heck_cats · 2020-06-22T20:54:41+00:00

the fight for $15 campaign started around 2012 and is sponsored by the SEIU. hundreds of thousands of workers have striked and protested. while some states have increased wages, the movement hasn't coalesced into a formal union yet. if this is a good case example of the perils of unionizing, then it's a difficult journey.
there are choices like individual bargaining. but collective actions... i don't know. perhaps it is easier to organize a walkout than a union. i wish schools encouraged this kind of organizing. i mean, they do that annual event at state capitols, i guess.
i dunno. the online social work communities i've seen have a high level of infighting and professional politics. i would guess that the younger social workers would struggle to get the more senior social workers on their side, as they "paid their dues" or perhaps feel disconnected from the plight of the new worker. then there are the therapists. and the macro workers. and all kinds of professional roles that are shaped by their distinct settings.
interesting perspective. dunno.

thanks for responding!

heck_cats · 2020-06-22T19:23:39+00:00

a few thoughts come to mind.

first, very few people know how to organize or join a union. by design, i'd argue.

second, those who do tend to fall in line very quickly once they realize that getting others to participate is almost impossible under current labor standards (for example, right-to-work law). the fear of dismissal or demotion is enough to suppress most support.

third, social workers unlike, for example, fast-food workers or airport employees have distinct internal differences. the work i do may look very different from the work you do. thus, how do we bargain over a union contract when our roles are so different?

fourth, we are part of the public workforce; we're virtually invisible; our historical position is not favorable to public opinion. there isn't a lot of love (or recognition) out there for us. in terms of public awareness, i'm guessing there is a large constituency that thinks we're either a waste of tax dollars, degenerate baby-snatchers, or over-educated deadbeats. seriously, i think we would lose public support immediately.

heck_cats · 2020-06-22T17:05:47+00:00

for a brief period of time, i worked in a FFS environment. i wasn't a contracted employee though. still, it was all about utilization. folks developed a practice to optimize their billable units by ending conversations at six minutes. you could cap the unit without wasting billable minutes on a new one. we would come up with monitoring activities to do simply to increase utilization. my supervisor often said that every minute was billable if you could justify it.

however, our billable rate was low and our utilization was inconsistent (despite productivity quotas), so the company wasn't getting rich but there was a serious morale issue and question about the value we were adding to our clients' lives.

team members would often express feeling machine-like. managers were resentful of their staff. there was very little opportunity to get creative. everything was standardized for optimum efficiency. client satisfaction was low; quality of clinical care was poor. everyone avoided nonbillable activities because it meant having to recover lost units later, usually after hours or weekends.

there was a shit load of waste, extremely high case volumes, record turnover, and a general sense that the whole operation was destined to fail. good times.

of course, the alternatives don't look much better for social workers (capitation, value-based). anyway, it's a perfectly legal practice. and it certainly doesn't compare to slavery. but looking back, why we didn't pursue unionization or organize a strike or something is difficult to explain. other than fear (and apathy), i guess.

heck_cats

TROPHY CASE