One more for diversion

What's that saying about it not being over till the skinny guy does the splits? Something like that. Today, after several weeks of observation, assimilation and postulation, I attended the drug court in Volusia County, Florida; back where I began and only (I thought) fulfilling an appointment which had to be postponed in my very first week here. My expectations were high because of what I'd heard but still, it's two days before I go home and my mind was perhaps more on the mind-numbing nine hour flight that lies ahead through Friday night and the pile of mail that lies in wait at home. I went prepared to be open and receptive to whatever I had to learn but not to be blown away. I was blown away.

The Court has been running as a diversion for drug and alcohol related offences for about ten years and for much of that time has been presided over by Judge Joe Will, a charismatic, compassionate and effective member of the judiciary. Judge Will's drug court happens every Wednesday in downtown DeLand, capital of Volusia County. It's clients are those who have committed lower level offences, ie. non violent, and whose offending is drug or alcohol related. In return for participation in a designated rehabilitation programme and evidence of having accessed, with support, paid employment, the otherwise inevitable prison sentence is deferred and the chance is given to overcome the addiction and rebuild a life. The programmes, which include the residential, are run by non-profit organisations and each week Judge Will requires the attendance of everyone on a programme and a full progress report both from the over-seeing organisation and from the individual themselves.

On paper it sounds like a now established, if far from universal, alternative to custody. However, what was beyond expectation was the level of engagement and accountability between the judge and each client. What struck me most was how absolutely transferable the basic principle of diversion is when judged to be appropriate. Again, many of the people before the Court today were likely to have a learning support need of some kind, their addiction issue being attendant upon that as well as homelessness, joblessness and family disruption: a familiar picture. It is when taken together that these issues are most successfully addressed and Volusia County's drug court has a 70% success rate (ie. non re-offending) among those who complete the programme. This level of achievement is due largely to the holistic approach taken to whatever issues are contributing to the person's recurring offending, learning support and education being key among them and all, in this case, in the context of addressing addiction issues. It sounds strange but it was a pleasure to observe each person at various stages of the programme explain to Judge Will  how they thought they were doing, what they still needed to do, and to receive his sincere approbation, admonishment and encouragement as appropriate. Their efforts and responses were among the most moving and impressive testimonies to effective intervention I have heard.

Judge Joe Will, Circuit and Drug Court, Volusia County, Florida.

A Vote of Thanks

This is the end of the project and it is not actually possible here to comprehensively pull together all of the learning and insight that has accompanied the last six weeks, that will be the task of a final report and of the coming months when it can be shared and implemented hopefully to wider benefit. What I can say is that my original scope, which concerned lessons to be learned in providing support for people with learning disabilities in the criminal justice system, has been met and surpassed almost from day one. That is thanks to all of the people in every visit and venue along the way who gave of their time and their thinking. The opportunities afforded by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust (www.wcmt.org) are generous and farsighted and many of the people I have met have expressed admiration at the Trust's level of affirmation and support for those of us who have been successful and fortunate in receiving an award. Like many fellows I could not have taken advantage of this opportunity without the support and encouragement of Cornerstone, my employer in Scotland (www.cornerstone.org.uk). And of course blogging is no fun without at least a modest readership so thank you both!

The people who also stay with me are those with whom my encounters at the time seemed almost accidental but who now seem to have contributed significantly to a thought or a conversation: John at Delancey Street in Brewster who, as he walked me to the door, talked of how much he hoped for in his 'second chance'; Bobby with whom I chopped potatoes in San Francisco who expressed his 'excitement' at learning how to cater for his three hundred housemates; Angela with whom I shared the joy of reading in her cafe/bookshop; Jake, the teacher at the detention centre in Lowell who referred to the use of local news and personal stories in teaching reading skills; the man in drug court today who struggled with his emotions as he explained to the judge how much he thought he owed to the opportunity the court had given him. These and more have made it not just valuable learning but an experience in how to learn. 

St John's River, Florida.

Theory and Practice

At this penultimate stage (hard to believe but am now at the end of week five of my six week project) I'd like to tell you that brilliant planning and foresight on my part means that I have spent the last few days pulling together all the threads of the previous weeks, visits, meetings, conversations, into a coherent whole as I began to round things off, reflecting in the rarefied academic atmosphere of Cambridge, Massachusetts. I'd like to tell you that. The truth is I only knew where I wanted to go, who I wanted to talk to and why. What would emerge from it, I had no idea. One thing that has emerged is my conclusion that working in 'silos' of expertise is something of a disability in itself when it comes to responding to human distress or need. People are not themselves silos but fluid and mercurial so our ways of dividing up responses, while sometimes practically expedient, is rarely appropriate.

I was very struck by the many ways in which  this way of working can be creatively challenged when I visited some youth justice services in Boston. The Department of Youth Services (DYS-www.mass.gov/dys) is engaged in providing various degrees of secure settings for young people in the criminal justice system and in ensuring that education provision continues, or more usually, is resumed, while the young person is in their care. I visited a detention centre for young people awaiting trial and/or sentence and a medium secure community-based setting for young people who had been convicted . In each context educators and education were key and the issue of learning support/disability/difficulty once again was viewed as endemic. ie the question was less likely to be 'which young person has a specific learning support need?' and more likely to be 'which has not?'. To this extent some of my own 'silo' thinking began to break down, as it has consistently throughout the last few weeks. 

The detention centre run by DYS in Lowell, Massachusetts.

I was reminded as I spoke with staff at the detention centre of a recent experience back home when, with representatives of other agencies, I gave evidence to the Scottish Parliament's Justice Committee on the subject of learning disability in the criminal justice system. A representative of a children's
advocacy organisation intervened several times to speak about the experience of school exclusion. The committee chair kept reminding her that this was the Justice Committee and had no remit for schools. Frustration on each part was evident but I remembered thinking that, understandable and correct as the Chair's position was, we  were all missing the point by not making the link with the early years. The silos might be working well but in the spaces in between people get lost. Here in Lowell, Massachusetts I found one example of how much more progress can be made when the relationship between education and a person's sense of their place in society is understood and the silos start talking to each other.

To do what they can to maximise this the DYS is partnering some research supervised by Professor Doreen Arcus of The Department of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell
(faculty.uml.edu). I also spent some time with Prof Arcus (thanks to a link made with Cornerstone's (www.cornerstone.org.uk) own research partnership with the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (www.sccjr.ac.uk)) and with her colleague in the Department of Criminology, Professor Bill Fisher who specialises in mental health and associated issues in crime. Questions of responsibility and culpability are always inherent to discussions about crime (what, if anything, can excuse wrong-doing once we have defined that an action is in fact wrong, or criminal) but especially so when there is either an obvious limitation in a person's ability to understand or an apparently 'higher' motivation for the crime. 

Among all the meetings and conversations of a theoretical and practical nature this week I also managed to finish Fyodor's commentary on the nature and impact of 'over-stepping', both on society and on the individual who does the deed. 'Crime and Punishment' ends with Rodya, having apparently gotten away with it, struggling so much with his conscience that he effectively betrays himself, is eventually persuaded to confess, serves his 'punishment' and is rehabilitated into a restored life by the love he receives from the woman, Sonya. The message, or one of them, is that justice comes from more than one source: society, yes, but also from ourselves and our sense of what we
owe to those we live with. Fyodor was commenting on a Russian society that he thought had lost its
moral compass and it's been of added interest to be reading the story while listening to other stories of those disadvantaged, through age, wealth or ability, and who find themselves 'over-stepping' in a society whose government is currently enraging everyone I've spoken to. Presently here, due to the shutdown and its impact on 'ordinary people', there is real doubt over who is in a position to exercise judgement over whom.

All a bit poignant and creating of further thought, so on a lighter note, the trees of New England in the 'fall' really are beautiful! It's still a bit early for the full bloom but in and around Harvard they are beginning to show off a bit. It's making me anticipate the end of the journey as it approaches. I am looking forward to actually pulling it all together. I'm also reflecting on all the examples of ingenuity in service, imagination and selfless hard work that have coloured my thinking since arriving here on Labor Day, and on what further influence they will have. More next week.

Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Streets of San Francisco

Just a postscript first of all to the Alacatraz tour. It didn't happen. As I mentioned before, the US government is in something called a 'shutdown' this week. Alcatraz being a national monument was therefore closed. Many schoolchildren and tourists were disappointed. I was philosophical because just looking at it across the beautiful bay is enough to create sadness in the imagination. Also I got my money back.

I did the city bus tour instead and a fair bit of just walking around both of which proved reflective (more later). However the main purpose of my visit to San Francisco was to attend the Delancey Street Foundation's two day 'Institute' which I did yesterday and today. This is a kind of full immersion course in the Delancey Street model for those who want to replicate it or simply learn from it. I'm not keen on replication but I am keen on learning so I took the approach that while unique creations tend not to travel well there is something to be taken from the experience of the people who have done the creating. This was certainly true this week as the Delancey Street model is a radical departure from many of the concepts and practices I take for granted in working for an organisation like Cornerstone where the support worker/person we support relationship and distinction is key. Delancey's relevance to the work we do is that they too try to respond to those who have come out of prison to no other support, many with learning difficulties, disrupted education and attendant issues such as substance misuse and homelessness. Where they differ however is that they are entirely a 'self help' structure and take their ethos from the vision of a charismatic leader, Mimi Sibbert, now in her 70s and still very much directing operations. A full explanation of how this ethos works in practice can be found on their website (www.delanceystreetfoundation.org). What it means is that everyone-every single person-in the organisation is a 'resident'. In other words someone who has come needing a place to be, help to change and a community that will support them in doing so. There are no paid staff and no 'experts', a term that is used quite dismissively.  The idea is that once you have been helped a little along the way yourself you pass on your learning to the newcomers. The stress is on outward activity, putting others first and recognising your own responsibilities. All of this I described more fully in the previous post 'Meeting Delancey' after visiting their New York facility. This week was about experiencing it. 

Delancey Street Foundation's residential complex at 600 Embarcadero, San Francisco.

Their success is staggering. Over 40 years they have grown the organisation to six communities or 'facilities' across the USA, the original and largest here in San Francisco being home to upwards of 300 residents. This includes several businesses all run to a highly professional standard which generate most of the organisation's income and provide learning, skills and occupation for residents. Home removals, a fabulous restaurant and cafe/bookshop are among them and are all utilised by 'Frisco's' trendiest and smartest. A rule at Delancey is that everyone graduates with three marketable skills. Recognising that many have histories and limitations that will never allow them to proceed into certain jobs, the emphasis is on getting people skilled and qualified in those areas where employment is at least a possibility: driving, construction, hospitality,retail, catering. Yesterday we were given an overview of how all this works, heard some personal stories and got to ask questions in preparation for today when we 'did it'. 

We were each assigned to an 'industry' for the morning having shared breakfast and a motivational input with residents at 7am. By 8 we were with our supervisors. In a spectacular misjudgement of my skill set I was sent to work in the kitchen and spent the next two hours chopping potatoes and making sandwiches. On its own I could take or leave that as an activity but what it allowed me to do was to share in the work of Bobby and Chris, two residents who had nothing but good things to say about what Delancey was doing for them. As we chopped we talked, and while the question as to why this model should meet with such success seemed not to interest them at all, it fascinated me. Later, having lunch in the bookstore/cafe, run with an outstanding degree of customer care by Angela whose tasteful choices in fiction, poetry and artwork lined the shelves and walls, I again tried to get at what it is about Delancey that works. Perhaps understandably the people there find it hard to name and are reluctant to analyse it too much. For me there was as much to wonder about as there was to admire, and that was a lot. 

Is it that professionals too often just get in the way? Does the experience of having been there before someone else give you an authority or authenticity no one else can have? Maybe. I suspect though the success of Delancey lies largely in every person's need to feel valued and respected by other people, at least some of the time. Most of us get this through some accomplishment in education and work as well as in personal relationships. Delancey works to build all of that up in a peer setting where mutual accountability is everything. It's very impressive and in its way quite moving. That people who make it through the first demanding months usually want to stay beyond the required two year commitment was no surprise to me at all. That the ones we met; clever, articulate, impressive people all of them, had gone on to find employment outside, or positions of responsibility inside, and were building responsible lives was also easy to understand. Delancey holds itself unashamedly to a high standard and is clear about who can and cannot be helped here. I wonder if that kind of self confidence and clarity draws those with the potential to rise high.If it does it's no less necessary for that.

Angela, seller and lover of good books, in Delancey's bookstore and cafe.

Without a doubt Fyodor would have approved of many aspects of Delancey Street. Yet on my tour of the city by foot and bus on Wednesday I kept puzzling over the seemingly disproportionate numbers of homeless people about whom I think he would also have wondered. The weather accounts for many, I suppose. It gets chilly here in winter but you won't freeze. But the degree of obvious distress and mental illness, something that will exclude a person from being admitted to Delancey on the grounds that this does require professional help, is what's really disturbing. 

It interested me very much to learn that Delancey had been named for, and modelled on, the experience of immigrants to the US. In another life I used work with asylum seekers and refugees and what was always striking was how driven, resourceful and often, gifted I found them to be. Of course. To get yourself out of war or poverty and make it across a couple of continents, and then to start to establish a life in a completely alien and usually hostile culture takes all of those strengths and more. So we always used to wonder about the people who didn't come because, for whatever reason, they just didn't have it in them to get out. What was happening to them? Nothing good probably. As I bussed and walked around this lovely city, made my way to 'work' at sunrise this morning and left Delancey this evening, I walked past a dozen or more of those who are not making it and who, it seems, no one can help. It was easier to think about the positivity of Bobby and Chris back in the kitchen but, as I feel sure Fyodor would say, easier isn't better.

Sunrise on San Francisco Bay.

Coast to coast

There's nothing like sitting up on a big brass bed after a day's travel and getting on the blogosphere! I know this isn't meant to be a travelogue but I have to tell you about today thus far. Having departed Canada on Monday I spent the night at Boston's Logan airport in order to get my very early flight this morning to San Francisco. Jet Blue fly affordably and comfortably across and up and down the US and  I picked a day when the sky was crystal clear all the way.

The massive quilt of the American landscape unravelled down below and I watched it for the whole five and half hours. The flight charts pretty much a straight course out over Boston Harbour, down over New York and then west into the vast interior of the United States. At first you're looking down on the suburbs and small towns of Pennsylvania and Ohio in their legoland form, then the space between the clusters of houses and highways starts to widen and you're seeing a patchwork of fields and rivers. These are the farmlands of Illinois, Missouri and Kansas, marked out in perfect rectangles and criss -crossed by the natural disrupters of boundaries that are rivers, the biggest and most identifiable being the Ohio and the Missouri. After this the land becomes more rugged until eventually, with a kind of gradual, steeply rising introduction, the Rocky Mountains appear, and the earth doesn't seem quite so far below anymore because they are huge and snow capped and really quite high. This meant we were over Colorado and as we left the Rockies behind the colour of the land began to change to a  reddish brown as we came over the desert mountains of Utah and Nevada. I hoped very much that we would fly over the Grand Canyon but I have to posit three possibilities here: 

a) we did and I missed it (very unlikely even for me ) 

b) we didn't (strange because it must be on or around the flight path) 

c) we did and it was on the other side (possible I suppose). 

Just as I was thinking I'd had the best five hour view of my life and even missing the Grand Canyon couldn't spoil it, it got better. San Francisco Bay was glittering in the sun and the descent showed off all those impossible city hills lined with multi coloured clapboard houses. I was having a lot of fun. 

A few hours later, having explored the waterfront, Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf, I really am sitting on a big brass bed in my room in a delightfully quirky, old style boarding house 'hotel'. Much cheaper than the big downtown chains and with much more character. Tomorrow is my free day here and I have booked the Alcatraz day tour which includes a boat trip to the old island prison and and a guided tour of what is now the museum. Thursday and Friday I'm on the Delancey Street Foundation's two day course. Just had to share my amazing day on the plane and reflections thereon. It wasn't lost on me that my appreciation of the landscape of this country came on the day when its government 'shut down' over an argument about its new health insurance legislation. For a few hours we really were above it all. Back on earth and down at the wharf earlier I also noticed how many (many, many) clearly mentally ill and homeless people wander and rant to themselves, oblivious among the tourists, looking all the more pitiful and lost in the sunshine. Part of this city's beauty I think is in its name. Given that the saint it was named for would be most likely to be found living among those very people it's ironic that they're seen as a blot on it. San Francisco is a jewel but like all of our cities it has its casualties. And a big name to live up to.

Fyodor doesn't have much to add on this occasion because like most penniless 19th century Russian writers he never flew across America. I am thinking though that he too would be found among the beggar men and women. Or maybe picketing the tour of Alcatraz? More later in the week.

The Rocky Mountains from 30 000 feet.

Alcatraz Island from Fisherman's Wharf.