Again, leaving names withheld to protect the innocent while not naming the agency in the Well Known Largest City in the 603….my own observations, my own opinions not influenced by anyone. This is one’s observations of a family member with a mental health issue with an early onset of dementia that is outside of the mental health system, that is another type of “dual diagnosis”
Communication is a Bitch
As I said earlier, the communication was a joke, open lines are literally non-negotiable. I as an autistic, whose familiar with telephony equipment got highly confused that the clinician’s “cell” number only works when she’s working. If she is not working the phone call drops. But if she is busy and is working, you can leave a voice mail. As with any state supported job, they are required to work only Mondays to Fridays between 8:30 to 4:30, because overtime is against the state rules.
No-Contact Through Emails
More of the power-differentials similar to teacher/student relationships is no family member can contact any of the mental health agency staff via email. In early May, a counselor accidentally gave my mother an Outlook printout of an email exchange with the clinician’s boss’ email shown. When my mother emailed that boss in May, it went downstream quickly to who that person likely gave them their apparent private email address. These upper bosses are quick to punish these people who probably make less than a DSP. I believe there was a verbal reprimand to that individual who hit Print. Remember the Granite State way is to hold the most vulernable to account.
It’s just some “rule” or “policy” that is not been disclosed since.
It’s perfectly OK for counselors to send a paper trail to their co-workers on Windows 10 workstations with most likely Microsoft 365 or Exchange and Azure hosting, so if they are so worried about confidentiality, well Microsoft for sure knows what’s going on with my family member than we do. (Never trust their Service Level Agreements they’ll promise you.) These email handles are accessible to the public Internet, despite in Microsoft environments, if you email your co-worker, it doesn’t actually bounce on and off the Internet per se it stays local (at least in Exchange on site), but the email address in the Outlook emails is more of an “alias”. Not sure how it works when it’s off the site, so it would go on and off the Internet if that’s the case.
E.T…Phone Home!
This agency from my knowledge must had a lighter duty Private Branch Exchange or PBX because the only number was a well known Manchester number with four digit extensions starting with 5, going back to memory when “case managers” left messages on our answering machine in Ltown. They have since gone to the cloud, with Polycom VoIP that looks relatively new. Depending on what type of PBX in the linear world, could be a downgrade, but for an IT guy who doesn’t get phones, it should be easy to set up on the Web and would be his upgrade.
Ironically the name of the user is shown on caller ID (because we still have wired phone for the house) so we can see what appears, the 5 letter initials of the unnamed agency and the person or department. But they do not have any direct extensions at all, it’s all centralized through the main number. Cell phones for those who have it, acts as such.
The communications system is a disaster. The main number has different prompts for different days; and different prompts for different times of the day. If you press “3” on one day, to the psych unit, the weekend you may have to hit “6” then maybe you’ll have to be transferred to another extension hoping you got someone in the councilor’s station. These things called “automated attendants” are designed horrifically – with using every number on the keypad as an option. (if you ever hear the phrase “IVR”, it’s flat out wrong and the Asterisk PBX nerds have intentionally mislead generations of telephony folks, Interactive Voice Response is for call centers like AppleCare, not to act as a so-called “Digital Receptionist”)
For our case my mother was on the line for about two minutes, pressing an option and getting to another extension to then transfer back to the psych unit. Minutes for the most vulernable people can be extremely expensive, if they have a welfare issued cell phone (as the haters would say an “Obama phone” or legacy phone service where they may be calling out of the area, but in state. Telephony and Unified Communications experts do recommend to be mindful of the user and keep Auto Attendants recordings and prompt levels to be really short to only a few options, as minutes can build up so quickly.
The IT guys are more alpha in a human services agency than they do in typical IT ops.
Whose Job Is It Anyway?
The place is a joke from our trusted confidants who had been in this family member’s care. The clients are not the counselor’s problems, it’s their toxic bosses. Lots of passing the back and again lack of documentation of what has been actually going on, lots of half-truths, and the half-truths have been trusted to be believed as pure solid facts. They don’t even know who their boss’ boss is. In fact the logo of this agency is a simple painted tree with lots of leaves, they told us on the down low, that they use that similar logo to visualize the organizational chart of the chain of command.
One could make the argument that the “leaves” are shown to cover up the shenanigans! From Enron’s “Crooked ‘E'” logo, to others, sometimes branding is intentionally market what they are!
Again you can’t spell “Management” without “MAN” in HuMAN services!
We didn’t know until late June, that the only way the executive suite would only be aware of wrongdoings and injustices, through a formal complaint, recommended that it’s from someone from the outside. For all we know, the executives are not aware of what’s been going on with my family member since December.
Confusion, delusion threatening fines from DHHS for non-compliance, when there is human rights violations (the appearance there of) since we have to be reminded as if we are 2 year olds that Medicaid requires accountability… but it’s only about money not about human outcomes. People are units, widgets and things to the system. New Hampshire mirrors Federal government and only acts as human clearninghouse for claims to people with mental health and IDD in other units in said state agency.
This story is still developing, the family member is now gone through a process on a wait list to go to assisted living. There are many other stories of control, gaslight, and other stone cold humans in human services screwing this family member over.