#social services

livelaughawesomewrites:

As a social work student and person with a certificate in social work, I completely agree with your comments about the ineffectiveness of social workers right out of university into a new community. You’ve got to know your community to be a good social worker, and a lot of people just don’t realize that.

Even more so, they attach themselves to some idea that everything they need to know they learned at school. I think what horrifies me the most about social workers is that you don’t have to have training in anti-oppression or privilege or any of that. You can get by with one or two classes specifically addressing that. And more so, I find that in social work programs, queer folks are kind of held to this huge “YOU KNOW EVERYHTING ABOUT ALL QUEERS” idea, so few white, female-assigned, non-binary, middle class queers actually address the fact that they don’t know what the issues affecting all queer people are. /end rant

I really appreciate your story (as a white “FAAB” genderqueer) because it helps me reconsider how I can be an ally with trans women and not reconstruct transmisogynistic power imbalances when having them as clients. Thank you!

This is an important point. Back when PartyBottom was a teenager and nascent social work student, her second required class was called something like, “Working With Diverse Populations” or whatnot, like, an introduction to cultural competency, which, while taught in some seriously questionable ways, at least introduced a class of mostly-white state school doofy 19-year olds to concepts like, “sooo, reverse racism does not exist,” which, I have to say, was a BRAIN ESPLODE moment for about half the class.

(However, I still use skills and knowledge I attained in that class, especially the unit on gerontology, which has been both helpful in my volunteer work at SAGE – an org called Services and Advocacy for Gay Elders, here in New York – as well as being a good friend/family member to people who are dealing with the difficulties that come with having an aging family member who is having trouble: hoarding, sundowning, dementia, anxiety about routine and attachment to sense of place, etc.)

I currently have a friend who is in an NYU MSW program and she on the regular hears the shittiest things come out of people’s mouths, but that is perhaps not not tied to the fact that NYU is an incredibly expensive private school and most of the students there are hoping to hop on to a pipeline that will eventually lead to very lucrative private practice dealing with yuppie neurosis.

Also I would like to agree with and echo your comments about tokenization and its more sinister ill effects: when you are called on to be the spokesperson for “the community,” it is important to realize that you are a select representative of many communities, many of which share only the loosest of ties. Say, even if we’re talking about “the trans community in New York,” this is a misnomer, as there are dozens of trans communities in New York, broken down by age, income, education, specific gender affinity, location/borough – and, perhaps most importantly, language and race. It bugs PartyBottom when people try to individually speak for all these constituencies, and it is something I hope to be wary of as I continue this blog.

Thanks for writing! xoxo PB

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been receiving all my health care from Big Gay Health, Inc., NYC (many of you know where I am talking about) for the last six years.

During the time I was there, they hired a case manager specifically to work with trans clients. Here’s the thing: I have known this person for several (12+?) years and am really not trying to shade them. I believe their heart is in the right place, but there are some institutional problems that lead to trans women getting bad care at places like this.

The trans care coordinator they hired at Big Gay Health, Inc was a white, female-assigned (FAAB, I believe, as the kids say these days) genderqueer  with an advanced degree in divinity studies from an Ivy League university. They were friendly. They were overworked. They had had several social-work type jobs before, but never (AFAIK) stayed with the same organization for more than two or three years. (Turnover in social services is a BIG PROBLEM for people who depend on these services, but that is a blog post for another time.) (They have since left this position to go to div school. Again. This time, for a different religion.)

As part of their job, a few years ago it was this coordinator’s job to compile and release a “comprehensive” guide to trans health and wellness resources in the New York area. It was downloadable as a .pdf, so I perused it. I noticed that though it contained no resources for electrolysis, laser providers, or hair removal specialists of any kind, it listed no less than six birth doulas. I sent a FB message to the coordinator (again, we were/are friends) to say “Hey, um… did you notice..?” and the answer I got back was like, herp derp, we’re still searching, it’s a work in progress, non-pology.

(The resource guide has since been updated to include hair removal, but IDK anything about the practitioners in it.)

INCONTRAST, I recently switched health care providers to a smaller clinic whose main populations are men of color who have sex with men, HIV+ people, lesbians (LOTS of studs & AGs in the waiting room always), sex workers, undocumented patients, and trans people. I was able to get an appointment there very quickly.

The intake was nbd, but one of the best parts was getting to meet the trans care coordinator there. She is a bilingual Argentine immigrant trans woman (I learned this from her bio on a workshop flyer). She is so smart and friendly and awesome. Here is what she said to me:

Girl! You look good! And it looks like you got your name changed, your ID changed, your Medicaid straight, your hormones. (She looks at my chart) Oh and it looks like you got the orchiectomy too! That must be why you look so soft. I’ve been thinking about doing that too. So, what do you need from me?

I told her, well, sometimes I’m a little self-conscious about the facial hair I have left. Do you know any good electrologists? She said,

You know I get a little bit of this-this (points to her face) sometimes, too. Did you know there’s an electrology school way out in Queens? The girls that work there have had like 700 hours of training, they just need to get their last 300 clinical hours so they need people to work on. It’s free, or maybe $20 an hour or something like that. Hey, here’s my personal email - email me sometime and we’ll go together and make a day of it.

I was fucking agog.I have never had a provider be so sweet, kind, and real with me – not to mention giving me such USEFUL INFORMATION. (Speaking of which, I will be posting about that referral shortly.)

Point is, I think it all comes down to hiring practices. If you prioritize education and being able to speak a certain kind of social-work-y, tenderqueer vernacular, you will get providers who can provide services for white, FAAB, transmasculine people. If you prioritize hiring people from the communities you hope to serve – people who have lived the life – you will serve those communities, and, hopefully, serve them well.

(Nota bene: I did not invent these ideas, I just happen to be living them. Activist and artist Mirha Soleil-Ross has been talking about this kind of thing for years, and academic Viviane Namaste lays down the extended remix in her book Invisible Lives. Canadians, I tell you what.)

tl;dr: best trans care social worker story ever.

c-ptsdrecovery:

librarychair:

Hey yall, I wanted to make a PSA about this because it’ll be useful to many of you in the United States. You might qualify for public assistance now, specifically because of rising food prices.

The federal poverty line, the biggest determining factor for public assistance, has been kept artificially low for decades because it was based on the outdated assumption that food was the primary expense for most American households. For decades now, shelter has been the larger expense, but the federal poverty limit has still been determined based on the prices of food commodities.

Because food prices have recently gone up, the federal poverty line has gone up significantly as well. This means if you were previously slightly over the income limit to qualify for public assistance such as food stamps or medicaid, you likely qualify now. I’d like to encourage everyone who thinks they might qualify to apply for these programs. The qualification cutoffs are still absurdly low, so please be assured that if you qualify for assistance, you’re not taking something you don’t need or deserve.

Please reblog this if you think your followers will find it useful. I haven’t seen anyone talking about this, it’s just something I noticed recently, so I want the info to become more public to help people who might be struggling.

If you can qualify for Medicaid, DO IT! Instead of paying things like $35-$70 co-pays for doctor’s appointments and medications, the most I’ve ever paid for a co-pay on Medicaid is $4. And that was ONCE. It’s so so so worth it. Medicaid is amazing.

Most places allow you to make a certain percentage more than the poverty line before you’re turned down for social services like Medicaid and food stamps, so even if you make more than the current federal poverty line, it’s worth applying. If you’re not sure if you might qualify, apply anyways. If you’re honest on your applications, you won’t lose anything other than a bit of time.

Also, if you have Medicare but are struggling to pay your premiums and copays, apply for Extra Help through Social Security AND your state’s medicaid program. Extra Help can help pay for your prescription drug plan, and your state can help pay your Medicare A & B premiums and copays.

(Depending on how your state manages help for Medicare recipients, you may be redirected from a Medicaid appplication to a Qualified Medicare Beneficiary Program and/or a spenddown program, either of which can help with the part of your medical expenses that Medicare won’t pay.)

(Also, if your state helps with some of your Medicare expenses, you may qualify for different and cheaper Medicare Advantage plans, either as a Dual Eligible person or as a Qualified Medicare Beneficiary, that might pay for things like dental, vision, and/or rides to your appointments.)

Brett Favre Sued By Mississippi Over Welfare Misspending

Reminder that white people are the biggest abusers of welfare programs and the ‘welfare queen’ was a successful propaganda campaign created by the Reagan administration that made the Black women the face of welfare abuse and turned white working class Americans against welfare and in favor of greatly restricting access to these services, which, of course, hurt the poor and disabled communities most and has ever since.

Anyway, when you come across special welfare programs like the ones here, please tell those in need. Largely due to the negative association created by the 'welfare queen’ propaganda, people feel shame in receiving help but remind them, if they don’t get this money, someone else will and very likely someone who does not need it. It will be used and misused some kind of way.