Working with Adults

Time to Cut the Cord

Time to cut the cord. Whenever you start serving at a motel, your intent is to stay there forever, serving the clients as they come and go in whatever way is best for them. You want to commit to them in a way that the rest of society is reluctant to commit to anyone or anything. You want to be the one constant your clients can depend on, in their very uncertain world.

For the most part, this really is what happens. You can start serving in a motel and before you know it, you look back and realize you’ve been serving there for fifteen years or more. You’ve seen thousands of people come and go, and you remember the majority of them fondly.

Unfortunately, every once in a while you may find yourself in a situation where you have to decide whether or not to keep serving a motel. Not because you care for the people any less, but because it has become downright dangerous for you to continue serving there.

Back to School–For Children Only?

Back to School–For Children Only—Really? In a motel ministry many of your services are geared toward children, none more so that in August—Back to School time. We spend the entire month of August making the rounds of the motels we serve, distributing backpacks to make sure the children get to start that all important first day of school with everything they need, looking and feeling “Just like everyone else”. It’s important to them and doubly so to us.

We hand out backpacks before school starts. Don’t wait until September. It will be too late to prevent an embarrassing first day for the children. A day that can shape their attitudes toward school for the entire year or even the rest of their lives if they’re shamed for not having a new backpack and all the things on the teacher’s wish list.

The children are your main focus for this activity, but sometimes they are not the only focus. Adults need backpacks too. If you have enough and if you can do it quietly, don’t cut the adults out. Many of the adults ride bicycles, the bus or even walk to work. They have to carry everything they need for the day with them. They can’t leave things in a car they don’t have and they certainly can’t make a quick trip home if they need something.

Things Aren’t Always What They Seem

Things aren’t always what they seem. Burn this in your brain. Let it become your mantra. It will save you from leaping before you look, thus averting many potential disasters.

That’s probably good advice for just about any situation life can throw at you, but we’re referring to one in particular that you will encounter thousands of times in the motels before you hang up your grocery bags and pass the baton to a new generation.

As it becomes more apparent to your homeless clients that you are a kind, caring person who will listen, they are going to start talking to you about their problems. They may even ask you outright for help. Be very careful in situations that appear to involve injustices done to your clients, especially by their neighbors, their employers, motel owners or law enforcement. (This is only a short list. The possibilities are endless). Your first inclination will be to leap right in and make whatever’s wrong right, or make it go away to ease things for your client because you can’t stand to see them distressed.

It’s an admirable thought, but before you do anything make sure you have all the facts. It’s human nature to want to be the one “in the right”. We all do it. It’s also human nature to fudge the facts a bit or embellish them. The chances of you having the entire story presented to you truthfully and accurately the first time out is dishearteningly small.

If you take your client’s words at 100% face value and leap into action, you may find the quicksand you land on rapidly sucking you in.

Sometimes, Rules have to be Broken

Sometimes, rules have to be broken. That probably sounds like a heretical statement when so much of this website and blog content concentrate on helping you “stay within the navigational beacons”. However, there will be times when you need to circumvent the rules if a client in need is going to be served in the best and most loving way.

We received a call from a client we’ve helped many times. We’ll call her “Sandra” (name changed). The needs were always legitimate because she’s a young single mother of two sweet little girls, and she has cancer. She has no family at all here. They are all in another state and are very poor themselves. It appeared however that we had become too convenient for Sandra, so the brakes had to be applied.

The last time Sandra was in need we paid her rent for two weeks, made sure her family had enough to eat and paid her cell phone bill. We told her to use those two weeks and the paid cell phone to concentrate on building up a list of resources other than Project Dignity to fall back on and that the next time a need arose she needed to call someone else. We wouldn’t be able to help her. We’re very small. If we pour out all our resources on a few families, a lot of others don’t get the help we should be providing.

Sandra placed an urgent call to us this morning. She was going to be locked out of her room at 11 because she was two days short on the rent. We hear this over and over again and yet somehow our clients manage to hold on even when we can’t help them. I decided to see what Sandra could come up with. I knew that she at least had a car they could sleep in if it came to that.

I’d had a tiring day and decided to make Sandra my last call before I got some rest. I called Sandra on her cell phone and she answered—from the front of the motel where she stood locked out with her two little girls. The manager had actually done it. She had tried all day to get help. Had walked for miles to places that might be able to help and had struck out. And, she no longer had a car because the timing belt had broken. I wished her well and terminated the conversation. Then, I sat there, and sat.

Know When to Say When

Know when to say when. It’s sad to think about, but there may come a time when you need to stop serving at a particular motel for a while, or worse yet, leave it altogether. This should only happen in the most extreme conditions, but it can happen. The most obvious one is if you find yourself and your volunteers in danger beyond your control. If this happens, you leave and live to serve another day, at another motel.

Another untenable situation can occur when you’ve been serving at a particular motel for a while and the residents begin to take your services for granted. They expect you to pay their rent, give them gift cards, bring them food, etc. and become testy and abusive if you don’t “grant all their wishes”.

This can occur if you’re too quick to solve problems or jump right in to fill needs without letting your clients have the dignity of thinking through their problems themselves. Why should your clients find other resources if you’re always popping up, taking care of everything? You’ve not only made them very comfortable where they are, you may also have taken away their incentive to be anywhere else. You have crippled them.

Children’s Programs–For Children Only?

We have a program every Sunday at a local motel we call the “Children’s” program. It certain We can all have fun together ly started out as a children’s program. We did crafts and played games with the children and had a great time.

After a while, some of the parents starting coming out to help us. They quickly became some of our best, most helpful volunteers. Then some residents who had no children at all started coming out and helping too. Now it seems we have as many adults attending as children. They dive right into the activities. They love doing the crafts and want to play the games. If we bring Play-Doh, they happily take their share and start creating. If we bring Hidden Pictures, they jump right in and have a hilarious time. Or, they just like to sit and talk to us.

I finally realized the adults wanted to be part of what we do. We’re fun to be around and, they desperately need something to distract them from the realities of their hard lives for 5 minutes. They love their children with a passion and they bear the burden of knowing it’s their responsibility to see their children have everything they need, when they know they can’t possibly provide it all. They feel guilty, stressed and discouraged.

We really all are in the lifeboat of planet Earth together

Look me in the eye

One of the best things you can ever do for the homeless is to look them right in the eye when speaking to them. So many people are afraid to do this. They’re afraid if they make a connection, something will be required of them. It’s true the homeless do have some very huge problems, but they do not all expect you to solve every one of them. Like any of us, the homeless are just looking for someone to validate their existence, make them real for five minutes. It costs you nothing to do this, but the value you give to the individual is huge. When you look someone in the eye you are telling them:

1) You’re another human being just like me
2) I’m not scared of you
3) I’m interested in you
4) I really do care about you
5) We really all are in the lifeboat of planet Earth together

This is an excerpt from the free “Serving the Homeless in Motels” eBook, which you can find out more about here, or download right now:

Download the free “Serving the Homeless in Motels” eBook