Counseling and Case Managing

Abstract

Working with homeless persons is more than just a job: it is reaching out to people in extreme crisis; it is creating a bond to restore stability; it is showing that society can respond to the needs of its most destitute members. Working with homeless people involves the most delicate interpersonal problems and the least tractable interorganizational conflicts—it involves being there after others have left.

I remember when I first hit the Row for good, and I was still alive enough to feel it. I remember patrol cars—and dark bottle-strewn alleys and nights. And my own flesh crawling with lice, and with half-forgotten shame. I remember the smell of warm port wine, and the sounds of groans, and men puking in doorways.

I remember watching the old men, and waiting for my brain to be numbed like theirs. I remember the waiting—and only the small struggles against it—for that chronic disease of the Row; hopelessness, to take firm hold of the body, dull the senses, still the torment.

The hopelessness—the sense of failure. That begins before you get to the Row; but it’s like a slight infection then-if you could get over it while you’re still out there. If there was anything—anyone—out there to stop you .... (Blumberg et al., 1973:35–36)