Direct Care Reflection

I currently work in the mental health field as the Director of Admissions. I have worked in this field for ten years. Most of that time was spent in what is known as “direct care” and for five years I was in a management role. The work is very difficult with a very high turnover and burnout rate. One of the main issues within the industry is the loss staff, which is usually due to job dissatisfaction. This stems from a demanding environment that consists long hours, low pay, and a general feeling of being alone or a lack of supervision in a somewhat dangerous setting. Passion turns to poison over time if one is not careful. The reasons for this are way beyond what I could write in this discussion board but there are significant gleanings I

Given the level of difficulty of work and the diversity of experiences and backgrounds, the issue of casual attributions is constant. Due to the demands and stress of working with high risk behavioral youth there are many times direct care staff are involved in serious incidents. This can lead to negative impressions of the staff by others within the organization, specifically at an executive level position. Many times, this leads the executive level positions to unfairly blame staff and ignorantly blame staff as they have never been in direct care and do not understand all of the human elements at play. This plays into job dissatisfaction and I believe that Kelley’s Model of Attribution would be a beneficial tool to train executive level and managerial level employees in. Employee behavior can be due to internal and external causes and we need to know these so that we, as managers, utilize attributional biases to make unfair judgements and utilize unfair and inappropriate actions. I believe that this is a biblical concept as Scripture states, “We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up” (Romans 15:1-2 ESV). As managers, we must be quick to build those under us up and not tear them down due to our own biases. Good analysis of the