Social workers help people find solutions.
A problem is a situation in which we don’t know the path around or over an obstacle. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a path: there may be but we don’t know where it is, what it looks like or how it works. There is always a possibility of finding a solution as long as we remain open to it.
This belief has helped me to help many patients and family members solve many problems that other people around did not believe could be solved. This belief has helped me help families reunite and bump their social security income from zero to $1500 monthly. It helped me get patients into emergency respite when the state abruptly closed a facility where we had two patients and the family members were nowhere to be found. It helped me help patients and nursing facility staff and patients heal relationships.
Recently the news from my national guard boss that we needed to show up the next morning in our Army workout clothes got me worrying I had a long night of digging through gear ahead of me. I arrived home late enough for my wife to comment she wondered where I was and tried to take my mind off of work for a little while. I ate. I lounged. I felt sleepy. It was time to start looking.
I opened up one of my four duffel bags and found my black shorts and tee-shirt with matching yellow letters spelling ARMY. Not a bad start. But I needed my reflective belt and would also benefit from having my cold weather coat and pants handy just in case.
After 10 more minutes of digging, I found the long sleeve components, but still no belt. The belt was something I’d get yelled at for by a senior Army sergeant using special Army sergeant language. I didn’t really want that, so I kept looking.
After 40 minutes, I had searched through all four duffel bags three times, and the belt was nowhere to be found. I could give up and face the music; nothing wrong with being an imperfect soldier. But I had a suspicion it was there somewhere. I was tired of looking, but I was still open to the possibility that it would appear out of thin air.
Where did I have it last, I wondered. Was it in Utah? It was cold. I wore the workout jacket then. Could it be…? I unzipped the big black fitness jacket pocket, and there it was.
That’s how we find reflective belts in the National Guard, and it’s also how we find solutions as social workers. We look. We think. We stay open, even when we don’t find the solution in the first, second or third place we look.
This tenacious insistence that solutions are out there to be found is a key element of the hospice social worker mindset.