Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 6, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 4
Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 6, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 4
I had an interesting exchange with a guy via email. I read this article in a magazine and wanted to send the guy an email. In the article, it said that the guy was at University of Texas in San Antonio. Well, that meant to me that all I had to do was go to the UTSA web site and look up his email address from the college directory. So I did that.
I sent him email saying that I liked his article. In the article he had said that he was setting up a think tank for entrepreneurial policy making. That meant to me that the guy's group was going to look for policy options where the government wasn't involved.
Well, it turned out to be a waste of time. The think tank was still in the planning stages and probably will never come to fruition. I had hoped to pitch an idea about poverty relief, but the guy was not interested any ideas at this time.
Most of you have no idea that when I say, debate and then social activism, I mean it. I truly believe that we have reached a point where we will have to address poverty straight on, instead of assume that poverty is a social construct. Yeah, I think most people nowadays believe poverty is an outgrowth of an unfair society instead of what it really is, an individual vice. And I do mean a vice, like smoking or taking drugs. Poverty is something that people by their individual choices fall into. The hopelessness of poverty makes too many people give up. With the government footing the bill for the living expenses too many people take the check from the government, follow the rules about seeking a job and... lose themselves in the day to day struggle to make ends meet.
Despite what you've heard, getting out of poverty requires that the individual do something. Most of the time it is improving their job skills. Doing that is sometimes impossible, because all the incentives are for people in poverty to give up and get by.
Let me tell you about my idea. It's called the Hiring Hall Association.
Individuals have to fix their own problems. The government cannot do it, because the government has to follow a one-size-fits-all model. What is needed is a program where each individual who has a problem is tested and an inventory is done on their skill base and their other resources. Each individual would then have to decide what they wanted to accomplish. They would have to set goals for themselves.
Then they have to be convinced that they CAN better themselves. If you can do that, then you've won half the battle. For an individual to succeed, they have to set some goals for themselves and their families. Each individual would have to come up with a set of goals they want to achieve.
The Council of Governments who represent the seven county area around Brazos County came up with a project to allow each person entering the system to give their information once and then they would be directed to all the different agencies and nongovernmental groups that could help them. It got cancelled because of turf wars between the various State agencies.
I want to revive that project, but with a twist. Instead of just using State of Texas resources, I want to invite every single charity, church and nongovernmental organization to become involved. I want an inventory of all the programs locally that join and what their successful clients look like.
I have had for the past year given the project the working title of The Hiring Hall Association. That does not seem to be appropriate, but it would set the tone for the project by saying to each individual: your goal should be to become a productive member of our society by getting the skills necessary to get a job. If that is NOT the goal of the individual, then you HAVE to find out what their goal IS. For the project to work, each individual would have to volunteer to better themselves. If they were not interested in doing that, then you have to live with that and help them reach a place where they are not in real need.
I also want to involve businesses who hire entry level people. By having businesses involved, the Hiring Hall could tell each of the clients what skill set would lead to a job. The goal would be to find a skill set that the client would be interested in AND where they could get a job. It would be kind of stupid to train someone for a profession where they could not get hired. On the other hand, why not have someone train for a stopgap job, so they have an income? In short, ask them to come back for more training as time permits. Any job is better than no job. Unemployment saps your will to help yourself. A stopgap job is just that... a stopgap.
I also think that psychological testing has to be in there somewhere. Psychological testing has been around for over a century. If you knew the type of person who was helped by each program, then you could tailor the program to the individual instead forcing the individual to accept a program that would not likely help them.
Our Founding Fathers made the point that we cannot expect people to be Good. We have to accept people as they ARE, not how we want them to be. We have to make the alternative to being Good carry a high cost.
On the other hand, what if a person just does not want to better themselves? What if they really do want to live off of society? What do we have to do about that? We can't just abandon them to their own destruction. Doing that sets a bad example in the community. An individual should want to work. If they do not to work, then we need to find that out and deal with the individual who has that problem.
Let's not talk about the extremes right now. The goal would be to fit the help to the individual, not the individual to the help available. That approach has failed. If you do not understand that approach has failed, then I think you may be crazy.
Here's how I think it needs to start. First every group with programs to help the poor need to be invited to work together. In short, the groups doing particular projects volunteer to work with other groups helping people. All the groups have to agree not to fight over turf. Turf wars in the poverty business seem stupid to me, but it does not change the fact that they happen.
When a group joined the Hiring Hall Association, there would have to be an inventory of what the group did. If the group helped people directly, then it would be best to test the people who had benefitted the most from the group's activities. What I am getting at is that the Hiring Hall Association should refer people to a given group only if the client will benefit by being there. The Hiring Hall Association would not dictate who the given group helped, but they would only refer people who could be reasonably be helped. Are you getting this? I am not saying that a given group would have to change their criteria for accepting clients in their own project. I only say that the Hiring Hall Association should only refer people who will benefit by a member group's activities.
Whether you recognize it or not, the seven county area has over 400 service clubs in it. Each club is trying to help. They communicate with each other, but to date they seem to address the emergency needs of people without addressing the long term needs of individuals. This is not a criticism, because it just seems that way to me. For too long we have tried to deal with poverty as if the poor were a class of people who must be helped instead of individuals needing individualized care.
The last time I started on a project like this I started with the Chamber of Commerce. I think this time that may be necessary as well. Sooner or later businesses have to hire the clients of the Hiring Hall Association. I'm almost convinced that the Hiring Hall Association would be a selling point for drawing in new businesses, because it would tell prospective employers that the seven county area has a set of people who want to better themselves. You have to think about that for a moment. The big problem employers have is that they are betting new employees are motivated to do the job. What if a business could be assured that the clients from the Hiring Hall Association were committed to doing their best? That would cut down on the risk factor and cut their costs.
The involvement of infrastructure groups would be crucial. What I am talking about is daycare, transportation, food, clothing and housing. If you do not take care of those, then you might as well forget it. Whether you know it or not there are groups in the seven county area who do things like that. The State of Texas will even pay for daycare for people who are doing job training. That's one of the best kept secrets in the area as far as I can see. Signing up infrastructure groups would be a first step, because logistics is everything.
As each individual entered the system, they would be invited to be tested by one of the groups in the Hiring Hall Association. The psychological testing I think would be crucial because it is not possible to help someone unless you know who you are dealing with. You give the person the option: take the test and get your short term AND long term problems solved OR just take care of what is your problem is right then. You cannot force people to help themselves. They have to volunteer. If you force them, they will just drop out. Conscription in job training just will not work.
This is the problem government projects have had forever. They try to fit a person into a program where they cannot be helped OR they make help conditional on attending a given program. That's a stupid idea. You have to get people to volunteer to better themselves. You cannot force them to fix their own problems. It doesn't work. You can encourage them. You can pump them up. You can be there for them as a resource, but they have to volunteer to help themselves. If someone is in a program to check a box, they will not actually learn anything nor better themselves.
One of the aspects of the Hiring Hall Association I thought up was the idea of having an individual join a support group. What I mean by that is that a set of people start their program to better themselves and work as a group to help each other achieve their goals. What if they swapped off daycare duties? What if each team worked to buck each other up? Some people are not joiners, so that would not work for everyone, but there are some people who need the support of their fellows to get much of anything done. The alienation factor is ever-present. One of the big problems with poverty is the hopelessness that besets people in that situation. If you feel hopeless, you cannot believe that anything CAN get better. Having a set of people in the same situation you are in, cheering you on, would be better than attacking the problem alone.
Why does a person who has no skills have to stay in an entry level job? Why can't they start their own business? What if the Hiring Hall Association offered to back people who wanted to start their own businesses, if they proved that they really were capable of doing that? I believe that has to be an option as well. Too many people are unsuited to being employed by someone else. These clients would have to be encouraged to start their own business. The Hiring Hall Association would have to help them avoid failing in the first three years. You did know that most single propietariships fail in the first three years? Well, it's true.
If the Hiring Hall Association did back someone in a single propietariship, how would any profits be channeled back into the nonprofit side of the project? If the Hiring Hall Association provides the seed money for a single propietariship and then provides the support environment to keep it going, shouldn't money be moved from the small business to the organization that advanced the money? I can't quite see the legal aspects of it.
I do know that single propietariships have to be part of the mix of helping people, because only when you own your own business can you truly be self-stuffiest in our society. Some people want that. It is a worthy goal and the Hiring Hall Association should help their clients achieve that goal if that is what they want... and are willing to train to do it.
It seems unlikely that a person could go from abject poverty to owning their own business, but I know it has been done. This is America. You can fail ten thousand times, BUT if you succeed on the ten thousand and first time, then people respect you for your perseverance.
Another thing I was thinking about was a quarterly meet up. What I mean is that each quarter, the churches, charities, nonprofits, the government and various businesses involved in the Hiring Hall Association have a get together where they invite the public to come and get help. Each of the different groups would have a booth. It would be kind of a festive affair.
Can you see it in your mind? A set of colorful booths each housing a group trying to help the poor. Each one with facilities to enter the client's information into a data base shared by all the groups in the Hiring Hall Association.
The idea would be to have the Hiring Hall Association collect and verify an individual's information. Then issue an encrypted magnetic card with all the information for that individual on it. An inventory of the person's skills would be done as well as their psychological profile. The person would then have to state what they wanted to accomplish. Then an individual program would be drawn up to help that person achieve those goals. With a psyschological profile, you could form support groups with people with similar temperments, kind of like the dating software that is available right now. Assuming they wanted to be part of a support group.
The person seeking help could then go to the various churches, charities and the government for help with the information available for scanning. Just present the card to the group trying to help and the information flows into their system. I also thought that this card could be used to set up the books for a new employee. I mean, an employer could just add someone without a big hassle with paperwork.
By making it an individualized program with milestones along the way, a person in a rotten situation could see that they were accomplishing something. As each milestone was passed, the client would feel more confident and less hopeless. Because each client would be treated as an individual, they would feel respected and begin to get a feeling of selfworth.
When I came up with idea, I determined that the Hiring Hall Association would not be a separate organization. If you do that, then you are begging for the project to degenerate into a command and control model like the state. That's a bad idea. The management of the project should be a rotated between member groups.
I'm with the Kiwanis Club of College Station. Each year the district level of Kiwanis has a convention. Kiwanis clubs all over the Texas and Oklahoma area volunteer to host the convention. An election is held at our annual convention for the location for the convention for the next year. Local Kiwanis clubs make their case for why it would be a good idea for them to host the convention for the next year. The one with the best presentation wins the honor of hosting the convention.
I think the same procedure should be used for the Hiring Hall Association. All the member groups who want to manage the project, could make a presentation to the other members of the association and be voted on. By doing it this way, you have the advantage of keeping the project fresh. Each new management team would bring a different viewpoint to the project. I'm not sure annual moves are a good idea, but greater than four years seems like a bad idea as well.
There is one more possibility that I thought up. What if the skill set for a given individual is bad for the local economy and the individual does not want to change, why not help them move to a portion of the country where their skill set is needed? Kind of a weird idea, but something to consider. Maintaining a person who cannot work and refuses to improve themselves is costly. Wouldn't it be better to pay for them to go to place where they can get a job and make a living wage? Something to think about.
I looked at this project and it seemed to me that it would be a good thing to do, because we have so MANY people moving into and out of this area. I mean, why not become a magnet for unskilled people wanting to better themselves? What is wrong with that? Why NOT be known as a place where you can get a second chance to succed in America?
Of course to get the Hiring Hall Association to work, there must be a volunteer willing to coach the client through their individualized self-help program. The job of case worker is the wrong concept for this position, because case worker IS a job. A volunteer to coach people through their program would have to be willing to be a resource without doing all the work for the client. The volunteer would be a cheerleader as well as a source of information. Someone has to constantly meet with the client and say, "You can do it." Too many times the State of Texas makes the mistake of destroying their clients' selfworth by grinding them down with bureaucracy. The client feels that they will never get into a better situation, because the person trying to help them has such a low opinion of them.
I know, that is a harsh criticism of the State of Texas' attempts to help the poor, but it seems to be an unavoidable condition for most case workers. Because of the feed and forget nature of the present programs, I do not see how a client of the welfare system can feel good about themselves. Each of the State's programs seems to be modelled on the one-size-fits-all concept. How could anyone feel good about themselves in that mode?
But what if you had a coach instead? What if the person assigned to a client by the Hiring Hall Association was an unpaid volunteer? With proper training the coach could seek to maintain a positive attitude in their clients. Their goal would be to provide a hand up, not a hand out. Their reason for being with the client would be to help the client achieve their goals. Logistics is everything. A coach's job would be to eliminate any excuse the client would have for failing to improve themselves. Too many people in rotten situations seek to find excuses for why they have failed. The coach's job would be to remind their clients that they volunteered to help themselves and make sure that any lacking resource like transportation was provided.
Using retired successful people as coaches seems to me to be a solution. It came to me also that we could use retired military, particularly sergeants. Too many of our retired NCO wind up without productive work after they retire. The present batch of retiring military has seen duty in Iraq. Why not use the skills they learned over there rebuilding a country to rebuild lives? Surely we could advertise in military journals for help. Many retired military are moving to this area anyway. Why not harness that knowledge to a good cause? If you think all sergeants are drill instructors, you are sadly mistaken.
Every coach who has ever existed has had to confront the balancing act of how hard to push as opposed to how hard to pull. If a coach pushes too hard, then the client could collapse under the stress. If the coach provides too much encouragement, then the client could have unreasonable expectations and feel cheated at the end of the process.
You're always going to run up against clients who want to game the system. The Hiring Hall Association would have to accept that a certain number of their clients will lie about wanting to improve themselves. The clients will never show up on time. They will become morose when chided. In short, they will be seeking a handout, not a hand up. The Hiring Hall Association would have to accept clients as they are and move them into the maintainence mode. Clients have to volunteer to improve themselves. If they refuse to volunteer, there is a point when you have to accept the judgement of the client and simply provide them with their basic needs. To do otherwise is to be seen as hard hearted.
The Hiring Hall Association has always got to be based on the client volunteering. If we as a society continue to address the issue of poverty using the feed and forget model ONLY, then poverty will never get any better. On the other hand, some people will NOT volunteer, so the feed and forget model has got to be the last resort, not the first resort.
Come on, help me whitewash this fence. It'll be fun... maybe.
Segment 4
I had an interesting exchange with a guy via email. I read this article in a magazine and wanted to send the guy an email. In the article, it said that the guy was at University of Texas in San Antonio. Well, that meant to me that all I had to do was go to the UTSA web site and look up his email address from the college directory. So I did that.
I sent him email saying that I liked his article. In the article he had said that he was setting up a think tank for entrepreneurial policy making. That meant to me that the guy's group was going to look for policy options where the government wasn't involved.
Well, it turned out to be a waste of time. The think tank was still in the planning stages and probably will never come to fruition. I had hoped to pitch an idea about poverty relief, but the guy was not interested any ideas at this time.
Most of you have no idea that when I say, debate and then social activism, I mean it. I truly believe that we have reached a point where we will have to address poverty straight on, instead of assume that poverty is a social construct. Yeah, I think most people nowadays believe poverty is an outgrowth of an unfair society instead of what it really is, an individual vice. And I do mean a vice, like smoking or taking drugs. Poverty is something that people by their individual choices fall into. The hopelessness of poverty makes too many people give up. With the government footing the bill for the living expenses too many people take the check from the government, follow the rules about seeking a job and... lose themselves in the day to day struggle to make ends meet.
Despite what you've heard, getting out of poverty requires that the individual do something. Most of the time it is improving their job skills. Doing that is sometimes impossible, because all the incentives are for people in poverty to give up and get by.
Let me tell you about my idea. It's called the Hiring Hall Association.
Individuals have to fix their own problems. The government cannot do it, because the government has to follow a one-size-fits-all model. What is needed is a program where each individual who has a problem is tested and an inventory is done on their skill base and their other resources. Each individual would then have to decide what they wanted to accomplish. They would have to set goals for themselves.
Then they have to be convinced that they CAN better themselves. If you can do that, then you've won half the battle. For an individual to succeed, they have to set some goals for themselves and their families. Each individual would have to come up with a set of goals they want to achieve.
The Council of Governments who represent the seven county area around Brazos County came up with a project to allow each person entering the system to give their information once and then they would be directed to all the different agencies and nongovernmental groups that could help them. It got cancelled because of turf wars between the various State agencies.
I want to revive that project, but with a twist. Instead of just using State of Texas resources, I want to invite every single charity, church and nongovernmental organization to become involved. I want an inventory of all the programs locally that join and what their successful clients look like.
I have had for the past year given the project the working title of The Hiring Hall Association. That does not seem to be appropriate, but it would set the tone for the project by saying to each individual: your goal should be to become a productive member of our society by getting the skills necessary to get a job. If that is NOT the goal of the individual, then you HAVE to find out what their goal IS. For the project to work, each individual would have to volunteer to better themselves. If they were not interested in doing that, then you have to live with that and help them reach a place where they are not in real need.
I also want to involve businesses who hire entry level people. By having businesses involved, the Hiring Hall could tell each of the clients what skill set would lead to a job. The goal would be to find a skill set that the client would be interested in AND where they could get a job. It would be kind of stupid to train someone for a profession where they could not get hired. On the other hand, why not have someone train for a stopgap job, so they have an income? In short, ask them to come back for more training as time permits. Any job is better than no job. Unemployment saps your will to help yourself. A stopgap job is just that... a stopgap.
I also think that psychological testing has to be in there somewhere. Psychological testing has been around for over a century. If you knew the type of person who was helped by each program, then you could tailor the program to the individual instead forcing the individual to accept a program that would not likely help them.
Our Founding Fathers made the point that we cannot expect people to be Good. We have to accept people as they ARE, not how we want them to be. We have to make the alternative to being Good carry a high cost.
On the other hand, what if a person just does not want to better themselves? What if they really do want to live off of society? What do we have to do about that? We can't just abandon them to their own destruction. Doing that sets a bad example in the community. An individual should want to work. If they do not to work, then we need to find that out and deal with the individual who has that problem.
Let's not talk about the extremes right now. The goal would be to fit the help to the individual, not the individual to the help available. That approach has failed. If you do not understand that approach has failed, then I think you may be crazy.
Here's how I think it needs to start. First every group with programs to help the poor need to be invited to work together. In short, the groups doing particular projects volunteer to work with other groups helping people. All the groups have to agree not to fight over turf. Turf wars in the poverty business seem stupid to me, but it does not change the fact that they happen.
When a group joined the Hiring Hall Association, there would have to be an inventory of what the group did. If the group helped people directly, then it would be best to test the people who had benefitted the most from the group's activities. What I am getting at is that the Hiring Hall Association should refer people to a given group only if the client will benefit by being there. The Hiring Hall Association would not dictate who the given group helped, but they would only refer people who could be reasonably be helped. Are you getting this? I am not saying that a given group would have to change their criteria for accepting clients in their own project. I only say that the Hiring Hall Association should only refer people who will benefit by a member group's activities.
Whether you recognize it or not, the seven county area has over 400 service clubs in it. Each club is trying to help. They communicate with each other, but to date they seem to address the emergency needs of people without addressing the long term needs of individuals. This is not a criticism, because it just seems that way to me. For too long we have tried to deal with poverty as if the poor were a class of people who must be helped instead of individuals needing individualized care.
The last time I started on a project like this I started with the Chamber of Commerce. I think this time that may be necessary as well. Sooner or later businesses have to hire the clients of the Hiring Hall Association. I'm almost convinced that the Hiring Hall Association would be a selling point for drawing in new businesses, because it would tell prospective employers that the seven county area has a set of people who want to better themselves. You have to think about that for a moment. The big problem employers have is that they are betting new employees are motivated to do the job. What if a business could be assured that the clients from the Hiring Hall Association were committed to doing their best? That would cut down on the risk factor and cut their costs.
The involvement of infrastructure groups would be crucial. What I am talking about is daycare, transportation, food, clothing and housing. If you do not take care of those, then you might as well forget it. Whether you know it or not there are groups in the seven county area who do things like that. The State of Texas will even pay for daycare for people who are doing job training. That's one of the best kept secrets in the area as far as I can see. Signing up infrastructure groups would be a first step, because logistics is everything.
As each individual entered the system, they would be invited to be tested by one of the groups in the Hiring Hall Association. The psychological testing I think would be crucial because it is not possible to help someone unless you know who you are dealing with. You give the person the option: take the test and get your short term AND long term problems solved OR just take care of what is your problem is right then. You cannot force people to help themselves. They have to volunteer. If you force them, they will just drop out. Conscription in job training just will not work.
This is the problem government projects have had forever. They try to fit a person into a program where they cannot be helped OR they make help conditional on attending a given program. That's a stupid idea. You have to get people to volunteer to better themselves. You cannot force them to fix their own problems. It doesn't work. You can encourage them. You can pump them up. You can be there for them as a resource, but they have to volunteer to help themselves. If someone is in a program to check a box, they will not actually learn anything nor better themselves.
One of the aspects of the Hiring Hall Association I thought up was the idea of having an individual join a support group. What I mean by that is that a set of people start their program to better themselves and work as a group to help each other achieve their goals. What if they swapped off daycare duties? What if each team worked to buck each other up? Some people are not joiners, so that would not work for everyone, but there are some people who need the support of their fellows to get much of anything done. The alienation factor is ever-present. One of the big problems with poverty is the hopelessness that besets people in that situation. If you feel hopeless, you cannot believe that anything CAN get better. Having a set of people in the same situation you are in, cheering you on, would be better than attacking the problem alone.
Why does a person who has no skills have to stay in an entry level job? Why can't they start their own business? What if the Hiring Hall Association offered to back people who wanted to start their own businesses, if they proved that they really were capable of doing that? I believe that has to be an option as well. Too many people are unsuited to being employed by someone else. These clients would have to be encouraged to start their own business. The Hiring Hall Association would have to help them avoid failing in the first three years. You did know that most single propietariships fail in the first three years? Well, it's true.
If the Hiring Hall Association did back someone in a single propietariship, how would any profits be channeled back into the nonprofit side of the project? If the Hiring Hall Association provides the seed money for a single propietariship and then provides the support environment to keep it going, shouldn't money be moved from the small business to the organization that advanced the money? I can't quite see the legal aspects of it.
I do know that single propietariships have to be part of the mix of helping people, because only when you own your own business can you truly be self-stuffiest in our society. Some people want that. It is a worthy goal and the Hiring Hall Association should help their clients achieve that goal if that is what they want... and are willing to train to do it.
It seems unlikely that a person could go from abject poverty to owning their own business, but I know it has been done. This is America. You can fail ten thousand times, BUT if you succeed on the ten thousand and first time, then people respect you for your perseverance.
Another thing I was thinking about was a quarterly meet up. What I mean is that each quarter, the churches, charities, nonprofits, the government and various businesses involved in the Hiring Hall Association have a get together where they invite the public to come and get help. Each of the different groups would have a booth. It would be kind of a festive affair.
Can you see it in your mind? A set of colorful booths each housing a group trying to help the poor. Each one with facilities to enter the client's information into a data base shared by all the groups in the Hiring Hall Association.
The idea would be to have the Hiring Hall Association collect and verify an individual's information. Then issue an encrypted magnetic card with all the information for that individual on it. An inventory of the person's skills would be done as well as their psychological profile. The person would then have to state what they wanted to accomplish. Then an individual program would be drawn up to help that person achieve those goals. With a psyschological profile, you could form support groups with people with similar temperments, kind of like the dating software that is available right now. Assuming they wanted to be part of a support group.
The person seeking help could then go to the various churches, charities and the government for help with the information available for scanning. Just present the card to the group trying to help and the information flows into their system. I also thought that this card could be used to set up the books for a new employee. I mean, an employer could just add someone without a big hassle with paperwork.
By making it an individualized program with milestones along the way, a person in a rotten situation could see that they were accomplishing something. As each milestone was passed, the client would feel more confident and less hopeless. Because each client would be treated as an individual, they would feel respected and begin to get a feeling of selfworth.
When I came up with idea, I determined that the Hiring Hall Association would not be a separate organization. If you do that, then you are begging for the project to degenerate into a command and control model like the state. That's a bad idea. The management of the project should be a rotated between member groups.
I'm with the Kiwanis Club of College Station. Each year the district level of Kiwanis has a convention. Kiwanis clubs all over the Texas and Oklahoma area volunteer to host the convention. An election is held at our annual convention for the location for the convention for the next year. Local Kiwanis clubs make their case for why it would be a good idea for them to host the convention for the next year. The one with the best presentation wins the honor of hosting the convention.
I think the same procedure should be used for the Hiring Hall Association. All the member groups who want to manage the project, could make a presentation to the other members of the association and be voted on. By doing it this way, you have the advantage of keeping the project fresh. Each new management team would bring a different viewpoint to the project. I'm not sure annual moves are a good idea, but greater than four years seems like a bad idea as well.
There is one more possibility that I thought up. What if the skill set for a given individual is bad for the local economy and the individual does not want to change, why not help them move to a portion of the country where their skill set is needed? Kind of a weird idea, but something to consider. Maintaining a person who cannot work and refuses to improve themselves is costly. Wouldn't it be better to pay for them to go to place where they can get a job and make a living wage? Something to think about.
I looked at this project and it seemed to me that it would be a good thing to do, because we have so MANY people moving into and out of this area. I mean, why not become a magnet for unskilled people wanting to better themselves? What is wrong with that? Why NOT be known as a place where you can get a second chance to succed in America?
Of course to get the Hiring Hall Association to work, there must be a volunteer willing to coach the client through their individualized self-help program. The job of case worker is the wrong concept for this position, because case worker IS a job. A volunteer to coach people through their program would have to be willing to be a resource without doing all the work for the client. The volunteer would be a cheerleader as well as a source of information. Someone has to constantly meet with the client and say, "You can do it." Too many times the State of Texas makes the mistake of destroying their clients' selfworth by grinding them down with bureaucracy. The client feels that they will never get into a better situation, because the person trying to help them has such a low opinion of them.
I know, that is a harsh criticism of the State of Texas' attempts to help the poor, but it seems to be an unavoidable condition for most case workers. Because of the feed and forget nature of the present programs, I do not see how a client of the welfare system can feel good about themselves. Each of the State's programs seems to be modelled on the one-size-fits-all concept. How could anyone feel good about themselves in that mode?
But what if you had a coach instead? What if the person assigned to a client by the Hiring Hall Association was an unpaid volunteer? With proper training the coach could seek to maintain a positive attitude in their clients. Their goal would be to provide a hand up, not a hand out. Their reason for being with the client would be to help the client achieve their goals. Logistics is everything. A coach's job would be to eliminate any excuse the client would have for failing to improve themselves. Too many people in rotten situations seek to find excuses for why they have failed. The coach's job would be to remind their clients that they volunteered to help themselves and make sure that any lacking resource like transportation was provided.
Using retired successful people as coaches seems to me to be a solution. It came to me also that we could use retired military, particularly sergeants. Too many of our retired NCO wind up without productive work after they retire. The present batch of retiring military has seen duty in Iraq. Why not use the skills they learned over there rebuilding a country to rebuild lives? Surely we could advertise in military journals for help. Many retired military are moving to this area anyway. Why not harness that knowledge to a good cause? If you think all sergeants are drill instructors, you are sadly mistaken.
Every coach who has ever existed has had to confront the balancing act of how hard to push as opposed to how hard to pull. If a coach pushes too hard, then the client could collapse under the stress. If the coach provides too much encouragement, then the client could have unreasonable expectations and feel cheated at the end of the process.
You're always going to run up against clients who want to game the system. The Hiring Hall Association would have to accept that a certain number of their clients will lie about wanting to improve themselves. The clients will never show up on time. They will become morose when chided. In short, they will be seeking a handout, not a hand up. The Hiring Hall Association would have to accept clients as they are and move them into the maintainence mode. Clients have to volunteer to improve themselves. If they refuse to volunteer, there is a point when you have to accept the judgement of the client and simply provide them with their basic needs. To do otherwise is to be seen as hard hearted.
The Hiring Hall Association has always got to be based on the client volunteering. If we as a society continue to address the issue of poverty using the feed and forget model ONLY, then poverty will never get any better. On the other hand, some people will NOT volunteer, so the feed and forget model has got to be the last resort, not the first resort.
Come on, help me whitewash this fence. It'll be fun... maybe.
posted by aRandomTexan at
5:53 AM
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