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Edited on Fri Jan-28-11 03:01 PM by HereSince1628
This is about me and Wisconsin Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. Last summer on the advice of Wisconsin Workforce Development counselors I made contact with the W-DVR to get assistance with getting back into the workforce after my breakdown. Being considered enough of a danger to other people that the place that fired me had me arrested and involuntarily detained, my teaching career is shot and I needed, still need, help figuring out how to go forward. I had hoped that by the time I was off the DVR waiting list I would have been months into some effective psychotherapy. But that never happened.
So now I have got to do the DVR thing knowing I am not well and without help to lean on. In the past my interactions with social workers have been very challenging and have sent me home in a dark funk that turned into bad behavior (raging-dissociation-self harm). I tried desperately throughout Dec to get some help lined up, knowing that my DVR appointment was going to come, and wanting to avoid repeating past scenarios.
(Just so you know...This past Monday I was hospitalized with what looks to have been an anxiety attack that just swept over me with no warning (I really wasn't aware I was worrying about things anymore than usual, I was just laying down watching _House_). My blood pressure sailed up near ~180/140, my heart raced. I thought I was chilled to the bone and shaking like a dog left out in freezing rain. They held me overnight, more out of concern about me harming my self (that always seems to be something they trip over) than concern for my heart, or gall bladder or whatever caused me to have 4 hours of intense chills, violent shaking and remarkably high BP. No one is sure what it was, and my follow-up is scheduled for Tuesday with primary care, not a psychiatrist.)
SOooo,
Yesterday, I had my first appointment with a DVR counselor. It went sort of OK for 10 minutes and then while outlining things we'd be doing he dropped the line that I had already used 30 of my 90 days of help with him. I switched mental roles in an instant went into defensive posture and split him off as an enemy. And I fumed, then, and all night. All of which is pretty much the way my social interactions always seem to go.
My request to you isn't about my borderline. It's about whether the following letter that I sent to DVR headquarters in the state capitol seems, at least on the surface, to be a reasonable response to what I experienced. I just don't trust my own responses to the world anymore...When I am in defensive mode aggression is always a first thought. I can't afford to do that, but I never seem to be able to get off defense without feeling I've defended myself...and I did this:
________________________
"I understand the authoritarian tone of much of your department's communications has to due with anxiety about fraud. I also understand that lack of individual motivation to seek work is a problem your department anticipates from consumers of your department's programs. Still, I think that one practice of your department is just very strange; indefensible in common terms. It seems that in the authoritarian climate of the DVR, the administrative interest to defeat fraud and malingering may have moved the department's policy into a circumstance that both is unfair and violates equitable treatment between DVR consumers.
My concern has to do with the 90 day deadline for producing an individual plan for employment with the assistance of a DVR counselor.
Yesterday, at my first appointment after coming off the waiting list for services, I was informed by Mr W-H that my 90 days were actually about 60. That is because I had already used up more than a month of days between when I was notified and the January 27th appointment that I was given. I have no idea what is true and what is not. But I find the policy as I was introduced to it to be perverse for several reasons. If that policy actually exists I want to approach my Wisconsin legislators to push for changes in the laws/ code/ regulations/ and or rules that have created it.
On the one hand, a user of DVR services has no choice about when a first appointment occurs when coming off a list. The consumer is in effect being penalized for the availability of a counseling appointment. That is a matter completely out of the consumer's control. On the other hand, the number of days between when consumers are notified they are coming off a list and when an appointment is available is UNlikely to be uniform between consumers, owing to the relative positions of work holidays, and variability in caseload. Consequently, different consumers are probably being assigned unequal durations of DVR services.
At first glance, it seems very unlikely to have been the purposeful intent of any legislative or administrative rule-making body in the State of Wisconsin to create such an inequitable implementation. But then, I do appreciate that I am not familiar with the governing documents and authorities under which the DVR must operate. I accept there is a possibility that your department could be legislated or otherwise administratively directed into what seems to be an unusually distrustful and hostile attitude toward consumers of its services.
If you could, please direct me to the section of Wisconsin Code, or DVR regulations or policy directives that stipulate the above described policy. I would appreciate it."
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