Submitted by Inel on Sat, 08/22/2009 - 8:54am
Wellness Policy for Volunteers and Staff
11-15-06
The Icarus Project national office is committed to a positive and healthy working environment for volunteers, interns and staff that is free of any form of oppression or discrimination. As a mental health support community, we cultivate a workplace and volunteer environment that supports wellness, emotional balance, supportive communication, and sustainability. We will not fall into the pattern of non-profit or activist organizations that exploit their own staff, interns, or volunteers; operate on continual crisis or conflict mode; endure constant high stress levels; inflict emotional abuse; create burnout; or expect extensive overtime or sacrifice in the name of 'the cause.' We will remain constantly open to criticism and feedback to improve our wellness and sustainability as an organization.
We all share a responsibility for group and personal wellness. We will be try to be clear about our personal limitations and will communicate clearly about our levels of inspiration, energy, and availability. Individuals have a responsibility to commit only to tasks compatible with their wellness and sustainable involvement. As a first priority in all planning and implementing of our work, we are committed to always listen to and honor each others' limits and capacities. We will support each other to not take on too much and to step back when we need to.
We are bound by the Americans With Disabilities Act to provide reasonable accomodation to staff with any needs related to a psychiatric disorder or condition. We are also committed to going beyond this requirement, and will make efforts at *extraordinary* accomodation for people's mental health experiences, including trauma, crisis, emotional distress, and extreme states of consciousness. We anticipate and accept that productivity levels, reliability, and consistency will fluctuate. We value people for who they are as part of our community, and we don't measure people by the efficiency and outcomes they can produce as 'labor.'
At the same time, we recognize that there is a limit to extraordinary accomodation. Sometimes staff, interns, or volunteers may have ongoing difficulty fulfilling their responsibilities, following through on their commitments, and collaborating with others despite repeated efforts at extraordinary accomodation. In such instances the staffperson or volunteer may be asked to take a break from Icarus work to focus on wellness and grounding before returning. They should expect to begin with more limited involvement and responsibilities, such as contract work or partnering with others on projects, to ensure they have regained enough wellness before continuing with their previous roles. It is hoped that breaks of this kind will promote personal growth and learning and allow people to develop their talents and capacities, so that they can make an even deeper and more meaningful contribution.
The Icarus Project national office is committed to a positive and healthy working environment for volunteers, interns and staff that is free of any form of oppression or discrimination. As a mental health support community, we cultivate a workplace and volunteer environment that supports wellness, emotional balance, supportive communication, and sustainability. We will not fall into the pattern of non-profit or activist organizations that exploit their own staff, interns, or volunteers; operate on continual crisis or conflict mode; endure constant high stress levels; inflict emotional abuse; create burnout; or expect extensive overtime or sacrifice in the name of 'the cause.' We will remain constantly open to criticism and feedback to improve our wellness and sustainability as an organization.
We all share a responsibility for group and personal wellness. We will be try to be clear about our personal limitations and will communicate clearly about our levels of inspiration, energy, and availability. Individuals have a responsibility to commit only to tasks compatible with their wellness and sustainable involvement. As a first priority in all planning and implementing of our work, we are committed to always listen to and honor each others' limits and capacities. We will support each other to not take on too much and to step back when we need to.
We are bound by the Americans With Disabilities Act to provide reasonable accomodation to staff with any needs related to a psychiatric disorder or condition. We are also committed to going beyond this requirement, and will make efforts at *extraordinary* accomodation for people's mental health experiences, including trauma, crisis, emotional distress, and extreme states of consciousness. We anticipate and accept that productivity levels, reliability, and consistency will fluctuate. We value people for who they are as part of our community, and we don't measure people by the efficiency and outcomes they can produce as 'labor.'
At the same time, we recognize that there is a limit to extraordinary accomodation. Sometimes staff, interns, or volunteers may have ongoing difficulty fulfilling their responsibilities, following through on their commitments, and collaborating with others despite repeated efforts at extraordinary accomodation. In such instances the staffperson or volunteer may be asked to take a break from Icarus work to focus on wellness and grounding before returning. They should expect to begin with more limited involvement and responsibilities, such as contract work or partnering with others on projects, to ensure they have regained enough wellness before continuing with their previous roles. It is hoped that breaks of this kind will promote personal growth and learning and allow people to develop their talents and capacities, so that they can make an even deeper and more meaningful contribution.
Groups:
We could also learn a lot from other organizations as well
Delphine,
I'm so grateful you chose to join the support network working group. Your depth and experience will certainly enrich our working group. I'm currently experiencing some minor problems with our organic group, here, but am really excited about collaborating.
Our wellness policy and conflict/grievance policies really need to be updated and refined. There are some wonderful ideas in there, but we need to be more clear about how we actually implement these policies and support one another while working together. Right now, is a wonderful time to be thinking about these documents and how we can make them more useful. I've been thinking a lot about the Ombudsperson role and how the missing piece is having multiple people holding and hearing grievances. Who supports the support people? How much can one or two or few people hold?
I think we have a lot to learn from other organizations and collective bodies as well. If you find any documents that would be helpful to our evolution please feel free to post in appropriate wiki page or start a new one for specific topics. Again, I am grateful you have joined us and really look forward to including more trauma informed philosophy into our shared work.
i/m
Leaderfulness embodied: Other orgs should take notice
Inel,
I'm pretty new to Icarus, but I just wanted to express my appreciation for this wellness-at-work policy. It speaks to many of the principles that I have long felt mental health peer/survivor-run organizations -- and any social justice and mutual aid organizations for that matter -- should take to heart: truly valuing the hard work of volunteers, interns and staff; making a commitment to honor each other's limits and oppose exploitation and abuse; actively using intentional peer support, trauma awareness and harm reduction to create a safer, more supportive working environment; and showing a willingness to accommodate people's disability-related needs above the often inadequate ADA standards (but within mutually defined limits).
If Icarus has put this policy into action, and it has shown promise in resolving the types of pernicious problems that plague so many non-profit and activist organizations (such as measuring people by the efficiency and outcomes they can produce as 'labor', creating burnout, and inflicting emotional abuse), then I think this policy ought to be shared as a model with other organizations.
I am also delighted to read TIP's conflict resolution policy that promotes face-to-face discussions whenever possible and eschews email and online means of "conflict resolution" that more often just create more conflict. I can't tell you how many times I've seen that happen. It continues to this day on at least half a dozen different peer/survivor-run lists that I am subscribed to, intensifying infighting within our movement and leading often to people being afraid to post or leaving the lists.
I actually just shared these two policies with the board of a statewide peer-run non-profit where I have worked for the past almost six years, in hopes that they'll take these well considered, innovative ideas to heart. (I hope that's OK. I figured most Icarus content on the site is Creative Commons license unless otherwise noted, and I quoted the policies in their entirety.) Anything that helps bring more mutual support and unity to our movement and helps end oppression, abuse and exploitation, I feel, is valuable beyond words. Awesome work on these!!
BTW, are you familiar with the work of Sandra Bloom? She is a psychiatrist from Philly who specializes in trauma-informed systems change work, who created a model of organizational change called the Sanctuary model for mental health and other human services agencies, which accomplishes its workplace culture change in large part by flattening the hierarchy of mental health's (and corporations') traditional, top-down "social engineering" model and giving employees and clients a real ability to communicate and share in decision-making:
http://www.sanctuaryweb.com/Documents/Human%20Service%20Systems%20and%20...
I saw her present about different organizations' successful use of the Sanctuary model in DC at last summer's SAMHSA "Dare to Transform" conference about trauma-informed care in human services. None were peer-run organizations, but the principles were readily applicable.
In my experience, many of the same pitfalls that workers in the mental health system have long faced in terms of organizational stress are becoming increasingly common in peer-run organizations, as a result of co-optation (both overt and subtle) by the mental health establishment, as more and more peer-run orgs have come to depend on government mental health agencies for most or all of their funding.
Anyway, keep up the good work, and I look forward to getting more involved in TIP projects soon!