Letter to Disabled Veterans of America

Dear Members of the Disabled Veterans of America:

I am concerned about the poor treatment of some of our veterans at the Volunteers of America Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter. Please bear with me as I shed some light on this concern, and seek your help in righting this wrong.
As you probably know, the Veterans Administration Medical Center leases one of its buildings to Volunteers of America, which operates its own independent community homeless shelter. Volunteers of America is under contract with the VAMC to provide at least 16 beds to serve homeless veterans in our area.
I worked at the homeless shelter for one year as the service coordinator. During my year of employment there, I witnessed unfair, improper and poor-quality treatment of disabled veterans – mostly through the director and another disabled veteran on staff at the shelter (both employees of Volunteers of America).

A veteran was dismissed from the shelter because he said, “I am not like the other people here” . . . The director talked about charging a veteran for the food he ate at the shelter because he had a job at the VA . . . Veterans are placed on the shelter’s Not Welcome Back List for no more reason than that the director is tired of them . . . A veteran’s diabetic diet was not followed by the shelter . . . A Black Beret Veteran with PTSD was accosted by staff and this brought on a difficult episode on the part of the veteran . . . A veteran was promised a bed upon his return from taking care of personal business in another state, but, when he returned to the shelter, he was told he was not welcome back . . . Veterans are routinely told by the director that they are mentally ill, and are ordered to treatment they do not want or feel they need . . . Veterans are told they can help shape their goals while at the shelter, but, in truth, they are told what their goals will be and must follow directives accordingly or be kicked out . . . Veterans are arbitrarily dismissed from the shelter by the director, who gives them no more reason than, “This is not working out.”

In general, veterans and civilians at the shelter are treated in an authoritarian, dictatorial manner. They are scolded like children and brow-beaten as though they were incarcerated. (Veterans have personally told me they feel that they are either in kindergarten or prison during their stay at the shelter.)

I could go on, but I hope that these examples will suggest to you that there is a problem in the way disabled American veterans are being treated by the Volunteers of America Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter.

I discovered, and you probably know, many of our disabled veterans do not feel empowered enough to register an official complaint about their poor treatment. Some of them have even become accustomed to poor treatment at shelters and elsewhere.

I have continued to work on my own time with disabled veterans who have been kicked out of the shelter, or who have found places to live in the Sheridan area. This is follow-up that the shelter is supposed to provide, but does not. I have worked with enough disabled veterans in Sheridan to know that the quality-of-care problem persists at the Volunteers of America Sheridan Community Shelter.

I am personally outraged at the shoddy treatment that our injured protectors have had to endure at the hands of a few poorly-trained and authoritarian individuals at the shelter.

So concerned was I about this treatment that I angrily confronted my supervisor about this back in December, and she saw to it that I was fired. I wanted you to be aware of this because VOA tends to vilify me as a man who is merely angry about losing his job. I am still angry about the same thing that angered me in December: The poor treatment of homeless individuals, especially disabled veterans, at this shelter.

I suggest that it could help improve the quality of care at the shelter if the DAV were to offer itself to the veterans in the Sheridan shelter in the following ways:

Advertise that any veterans with concerns about their treatment at the Sheridan Community Shelter may be addressed to the DAV, or an individual or committee of the DAV.

Secondly, I advise that you set up a monthly meeting with the veterans at the shelter where vets can safely air their concerns by meeting one at a time with a representative or a committee of representatives from the DAV. I am honestly concerned thatthe social workers who act as liaisons between the VA and the shelter have a tendency to dismiss vets’ concerns and look the other way when serious questions are asked about the shelter. They are good people, but they tend to “side” with the shelter.

I suggest a monthly meeting, because there is a certain amount of natural turnover in the veteran population there, and because different issues regarding poor treatment of people at the shelter crop up fairly routinely. The information obtained in these meetings should be forwarded to someone trustworthy at the VA.

Your presence as something of a quality-control entity I believe would greatly reduce the uncalled-for treatment of disabled veterans at the Volunteers of America Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter, as the corporation is extremely image-conscious. This slight pressure from you could make the director think twice about her treatment of disabled veterans at the shelter. The director is a responsive person, but I don’t believe she realizes how difficult and dismissive she is being, nor the anxiety she is causing some vets at the shelter.

Please advise me as to your response to my concerns and suggestions. I would be happy to meet with anyone who wishes to follow up on this with me. I hope it is clear that I do not intend to ask to be a part of whatever process the DAV wishes to implement in this matter. I just wanted to bring it to your attention and suggest a means by which the DAV could make a significant difference.

Thank you for your time and your attention to this matter.

Welcome to the Shelter! Welcome! Did We Say 'Welcome?'

Welcome to the Volunteers of America Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter.
We are glad you are here, but, please don’t bother us while we are working.
We realize that you might be from a background that makes it difficult for you to follow every little rule. In order to make your stay here as short and un-troubling as possible, we have a spate of rules that we show you on paper, another rash of additional rules scotch-taped to the walls and doors, and a flood of decrees that are hidden in the recesses of the shelter director’s mind.
We will make it so difficult and so weird for you to be here that you will want to leave by the time we kick you out, and you will embrace the underside of a bridge or the opportunity to sink unnoticed into the silent, homeless mob.
We fire the staff members who believe you are a miracle, and prefer to consider you somehow involved with drugs.
Those big hugs we give you are just our way of searching for weapons and detecting beer on your breath.
We are really looking for 30 or 40 perfectly behaved, well-groomed, rule-abiding and cowtowing homeless people.
If you are not such a one, don’t let the door hit ya where the Good Lord split ya.

– Management

Why Leadership Resents The People They Are Supposed To Help

The other day a friend of mine rhetorically asked, “Why is it that you find so many people in the people-helping professions the most cynical and bitter toward the people they are supposed to be helping?”
I don’t know, but he got me to thinking.
In my own experience, I have known a teacher who disliked children, a businesswoman who disliked customers, a welfare worker who resents the poor, a pastor who had no patience with people who had spiritual problems, and, now most certainly, a homeless shelter director who treats homeless veterans and non-veterans as though she despises them for their need.
By comparison, she makes Cinderella’s step-mother seem like Jesus.
By contrast, I know Jesus to be one who will peel away the rotten and base things within us to find in us his image, and dignify us with his love and care. Even laying aside one’s religious views, we have a certain onus upon us to take care of the people who edge into our line of sight. This is the very essence of compassion – strangely absent in a place where compassion would be the most healing, the most helpful, the most human response to individuals suffering from many losses, including a certain perceived disenfranchisement from the norms of society.
I am very disappointed to report that compassion is discouraged at the Volunteers of American Sheridan Homeless Shelter, and that people are routinely questioned, accused, brow-beaten, scolded and kicked out for no reason – all from the director’s office
If there really is such a thing as client resentment disease, the CDC would have a heyday here.

Investigation Complete: VA OKS VOA

I am disappointed, but not surprised, that the Veterans Health Administration has reported back that the Volunteers of America Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter is considered “in compliance” with the VA Per Diem Grant Program.
On May 30, I received a letter from U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, in which he forwarded to me a copy of the report he received from the VA.
The gist of the report is that the shelter is fine, and that I am more than likely unstable. They discovered that I am not a veteran, which, apparently makes me much easier to dismiss.
Of course, there is no department of quality of care to go to in the system, otherwise many of the abused veterans in the Sheridan shelter would have contacted these. If there is such a place, it is a well-guarded secret.
If you will recall, I made the following list of issues of non-compliance to the VA:

1. The “reasonable assurance” that not more than 25 percent of participants at any one time will be non-veterans was not attempted in the calendar year of 2007. The per diem “assurances” were consciously ignored.
2. There is certainly nothing being done to establish transitional housing outside of the walls of the shelter. If the per diem grant assumes progress in the area of transitional living, no such progress exists.
3. There is no follow-up on the part of the shelter with veterans who have acquired permanent housing. Once they leave the threshold of the shelter, they are left out of contact, unless they have to return to the shelter because their living situation failed somehow.
4. Programming and goals for are dictated to the veteran by the shelter director. Most of these vulnerable individuals simply accept their fate at the shelter, because they need a place to live. Also, veterans are routinely kicked out of the shelter and placed on a “not-welcome-back” list, which certainly stops the flow of care, while the grant monies continue.

The report to Enzi did not address any of these issues.
My letter to the VA included this question: “I am writing you to find out whether the items above, which I consider improprieties with regard to conditions expected from the per diem grant award, are in fact improprieties. If so, how will your office address these? If not, please assist me where I am misunderstanding this.”
Obviously, the “reasonable assurances” included in the grant program are not “serious reasonable assurances,” as the VA disregarded the fairly substantial items 1-4 above, and spent more time figuring out ways to discredit me as the person asking the questions, to whit: “Mr. Cummings was not a veteran and had acted repeatedly in a hostile manner toward VOA and VA staff involved in the project. As a result Mr. Cummings was asked not to return.” The VOA is ticked that I won’t be quiet, so they are adding a dash of vilification. I expected as much.
True, it may be too optimistic to expect the VA to take upon itself a quality control issue in a tiny shelter that has a contract for 16 veteran beds. Fortunately, this is only one of the many trees I intend to bark up.

He Lasted A Week, Then Wanted Escape From Her Clutches

The young man who I reluctantly took to the abusive VOA Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter called me last week and asked for help.
I had left him my card when I let him off at the shelter, telling him that there would come a day, soon, when he could no longer bear the director and at least one of her staff.
The day came, and he called from the library last Saturday.
I met him there and drove him to the bus station for a ticket to Rapid City.
When I asked him what had happened at the shelter, he told me, “Things got weird up there pretty fast.” He didn’t seem to want to elaborate. I didn't press him for details, as much fun as it would have been to blab it all on my blog.
I am not one to believe that my helping a person gives me the right to pry information out of them, or tell them what they should do, or attach rules to my help.
This is one of the places where the director of the abusive shelter and I part company.
Among the inappropriate meddling that I have observed at the shelter include:

Obstructing residents from obtaining spot jobs.
Asking residents whether they are having sex downtown.
Demanding that residents not eat meals at local bar-and-grills.
Threatening to kick out residents who take jobs with employers of which the director does not approve.
Demanding that residents get costly mental health evaluations when they don’t think like she does – or get kicked out.
Demanding that one resident not spend time with another resident’s friend.
Insisting on knowing the resident’s living situation when he or she finds a means to leave the shelter.

This kind of behavior ought to offend every individual and business owner who has supported “the homeless” by giving time, money or items to Volunteers of America and/or the shelter. Any support directed to VOA helps prolong and tacitly supports this kind of behavior against people experiencing some of their most vulnerable moments.
Any support given to the VOA condones this outrageous and manipulative behavior.

'I Am Used To Being Treated Like Crap'

A while back a friend called me to say he had met a guy at a gas station who was looking for the local homeless shelter.
“He needs a ride up there,” he said.
My friend didn’t have a vehicle. I have given him a few lifts, and he opted to call me to help out this other guy.
I met the guy that wanted to go to the shelter, and talked to him for a while.
I told him I really had mixed feelings about taking him to the shelter because the director is a mean-spirited megalomaniac, and he was unlikely to be treated very well, or fairly, or nicely, or compassionately.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I am used to being treated like crap.”
That doesn’t say much for our culture.
Well, I told him if he expected to be treated like crap that he was headed to the right place. I drove him up to the shelter, explaining that they won’t let me on the property because I blog about their poor treatment of people, their disorganized organization, and the fraudulent ways they perpetuate grant money from the federal government.
Anyway, I gave him my card and dropped him off.
His words, “I am used to being treated like crap,” still hum in my head. The shelter in my town perpetuates the crappy treatment of people.
Anyone donating money or materials to Volunteers of America and its Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter is supporting thugs in their thuggery.

New Drug Test Office Beats VOA Hands Down On Ethics

I see where a former Volunteers of America program director of the local drug testing division is forming her own drug testing services.
She is actually going to certify her people according to Federal Department of Transportation regulations for the use of breath test equipment. This is something that Volunteers of America has not gotten around to doing. It was deemed too expensive.
I mentioned this to the DOT, and we have been emailing back and forth for some time. Apparently, the DOT is concerned that Volunteers of America is not holding up its end, which is just another day at the office at VOA Wyoming-Montana.
When I worked in the drug testing division at VOA, we were “certified” as technicians to use testing procedures with Redwood labs of California, and MedTox labs. Our certification required that we take a written test, and it with our administrator’s permission, we did so with the answer sheet in front of us. To do otherwise was deemed too much fuss.
Certification for breath tests was non-existent. Certification for specimen collection/preparation was bogus. Still, on we tested.
It sounds to me like this woman who is starting her own business might have ethics that are missing from the VOA work culture.