welntaod

This turned out to be a far, far better day than I would've predicted this morning... All week I've been prepping to present a case, as it were, to a state-run review committee. It's a cross between an administrative meeting and a court case, all to defend how I am and my agency is caring for a particular client at my group home. I'm this fellow's legal advocate and am directly responsible everything from his finances to curbing his port-a-potty fetish. A little bit of a lot of strange responsibilities.

The packet of behavior data, graphs and the what-not have been steadily compiled for the past couple of weeks. They were sent out to the bureau liason to be distributed through the committee members I was charged with wowing. I found out yesterday that my 28 page presentation was never received by anyone, let alone my local superiors, all of whom made sure to keep my office phone ringing off the hook.

I spent all of my time yesterday alternating between choking 2 different fax machines with over 90+ pages to transmit and freaking out silently. I was convinced that my appointment would be spent scolding me for doing a shit job and wasting their time for filling out triplicate forms completely wrong. This vision was redoubled while I spent the commute swearing loudly, pulling into the departmental parking lot already 6 minutes late.

I spead in, settled myself, smoothed feathers and introduced myself... I immediately noticed that one of the people serving to hang me was an administrator in my agency. She was someone who I knew I could trust a getting a fair shot, not the verbal reaming I'd awaited. The 7-8 people perused the copies I'd passed out, asked questions about my tracking and graphing ideas and something unexpected happened. They started complimenting me.

One board member liked the fact that I'd taken initiative in devising a new way to track previously overlooked data. Some enjoyed my candor and the obvious pleasure I have in working aside this resident at his volunteer work. One committee member asked for a copy of a behavior program I'd written for divining musical taste from my charge, a handicapped fellow with profound communication difficulty. It all went remarkably well.

By the end of it, they steared themselves back, made a suggestion to correct & return to their office at another time and sent me on their way. A bizarre, almost uncomfortable victory and happily, a note on how I spent the rest of my day, teamed with this same resident washing dishes at his favorite volunteer job.