What does outreach do?
Ivy: With outreach, our focus is case management and meeting people where they’re at. We go to the encampments and meet our clients where they’re at and see how we can best support them.
Maddy: We help bridge that gap between services and accessing services, working with provider organizations to make sure that the clients have everything that they need.
Sometimes we are the unofficial first responders due to maybe some barriers that they have and they’re not able to access services. We are their case managers. We are their empowerment buddies, and we walk alongside them all the way through their process.
Ivy: We really try to focus on being a thought partner and helping empower them to make the decisions that are right for them because they’re the experts on their life.
How do you empower decision making when your clients make decisions you don’t agree with?
Maddy: It can be really hard, because the clients have autonomy and we have to honor client voice, client choice, the right to self-determination. Even if we know that the choices they’re making are probably not going to be beneficial, we still have to honor what they choose and accepting that can be difficult for us.
Ivy: That was something that we really learned from this particular client interaction for sure, how important it is to honor their voice and their wishes.
What was your experience with this client?
Ivy: We met this client and his partner in April 2023, and they were very, very deep out.
Maddy: The property was very desolate and remote and rural. You’re not going out there unless you really know people out there.
Ivy: We were referred to them through a local agency in the area, and they mentioned his diagnosis.
Maddy: They had briefly mentioned it and it didn’t set in with us yet because we were more focused on helping them get their immediate barriers relieved.
Ivy: We received a phone call and they let us know that he was terminal and that things had progressed quickly. We went out to reconnect with them and it was very sad to see the progression. To see his state and to realize that they had been sleeping in a van for all this time.
Maddy: The decline in his health and just seeing how much weight he had lost. The man went from being like a six-foot-tall man, 170 pounds, to maybe less than 65 pounds when he passed. Watching that decline was very difficult.
Ivy: When we reconnected with him, we also coordinated with their hospice social worker. And this was our introduction to hospice. We reached out to all the support systems that we could find and really dug for some resources.
Maddy: It took a community of resources because there is no such thing as hospice programs for clients experiencing homelessness. If you are out of shelter, they cannot provide you with the services you need.
Ivy: Unless you’re willing to go to a hospice home, which our client was not. He was adamant that he did not want to go to a hospice home. It was very hard for us because he’d be able to get better care there.
We continued to go and check on them. He was pretty incoherent at this point, so we were just really going to provide the best support that we could for his partner, who had been his main caretaker. The final day we were there we stepped outside to speak with his partner and one of the nurses came out and let us know that he had passed.
It was a real honor to be there for those last moments. It was great to be able to provide the support that his partner needed because she was alone.
Maddy: Sometimes it’s not even about case management or the paperwork or the resources or anything like that. Sometimes our job just boils down to being there for the client in their time of need, in their trauma, in their crisis, and being that pillar for them when they cannot.
How important is it to just be there for someone and to share their burden when that’s all you can do?
Maddy: It’s about being able to have the hard conversations and knowing when to have balance and hold the client up no matter what. No matter what they’re saying, what emotion is pouring out of them. It is about just offering yourself, letting the client know I hear you and I see you.
We hugged her and we just held her because that’s really all you could do in that moment. There were no words you could say. You just had to hold her. I think at the end of the day, when we’re talking about the mission, hope, help and healing, that hug, that was the healing.
Ivy: It’s just that basic humanness, that connection, that relationship. Taking that time to show up. There’s a lot of mistrust with these broken systems and other service providers. So, it’s really important to just show up and be consistent.
Maddy: Even if you don’t have anything to give them or any new information, if you show up and show face, they’re grateful. That relationship and that bond will stay with that client forever. Laying with the client, holding their hands, wiping the dirt out of their face, rubbing the dirt out of their hair.
We are boots on the ground.
What did this experience teach you about respecting client autonomy?
Maddy: It was hard because at that moment he was suffering. There’s nothing we could do because that wasn’t his decision. We had to just let it go. You just have to honor it. There’s no manual.
Ivy: It definitely hammered home the client voice, client choice. I just kept thinking about what would I want if I were making end of life choices and how important that would be to me, that the people around me respected that.
It solidified the fact that that our neighbors are human beings with hopes, dreams, goals, and wishes that are very important to them.
What do you want the Tacoma Rescue Mission community to know about outreach?
Maddy: We go above and beyond. Our job does not just stop in an office. It doesn’t just stop on a sidewalk. Everything that we do, we lead with passion. We have lived experience as well and we lead with our hearts.
Ivy: Compassion is key. Just taking the time to build that rapport and build those relationships so that when they are in positions like this, very difficult positions, maybe the most difficult of their lives, they know that that they can reach out to us, that we’ll show up no matter what.
Maddy: Most of our neighbors are experiencing some of the most egregious traumas or crises of their life. At that time, they may not remember our names, but they’ll remember what we did. It’s about going that extra mile not just for your teammate, but also for your community, the community members and the people that we serve.
Ivy: I’ve learned a lot from our neighbors, and it’s really got me to question some of my beliefs. There are so many talented, extremely smart, extremely compassionate people that are just experiencing a really unfortunate time in their lives.
I think that’s what I’ve learned most from outreach, is that every person has a story and most of the time they just want somebody to hear it. So, I’m showing up and hearing them.
