By Interim Case Manager Frenchie Pulluaim
I am always attending trainings, informational sessions, and conferences about topics that affect the families at Community LINC. March 24 through March 26th, I attended training that targeted something that is huge for most families in crisis. The training was about Invisible people.
Invisible people are people that affect someone’s household, but are never formally/officially counted as an expense to the household. These are the non-working family members, boyfriends, buddies, and parents that eat, sleep, and partake of the benefits that a family receive, no matter how small the benefit is.
This is a chronic problem for our families and usually coming into this program provides an opportunity to unload some of the invisible people they have been taking care of for years. These are people who can stop a family from being successful. This is a constant problem, not just for our agency, but most agencies.
We currently have a family with a son who is 21 plus. Our client is his mother, but she is no longer responsible for his welfare. But, he always finds a way to live in the household physically (I feel that maternally mom feels obligated), but not on paper. This son causes many issues for the mother. He has a poor choice of friends, disregards mom’s authority in front of the younger children, and is not applying himself in a positive way, although he has information/resources.
Mom has a son who is invisible in her household.
He increases the cost of caring for her family, but mom does not recognize/acknowledge that he is a part of her inability to get on her feet and become self-sufficient.
The training explored ways of working with the heads of household to assist them to see the cost of invisible people, and their responsibility to support their immediate household (children). This was a sensitive because it is very difficult to tell residents/clients that they are too poor to assist their love ones.
This training was to learn how to apply motivational case management to create a comfort level with clients that will allow you to speak with them as they problem solve this issue. Case managers should never undermine a client/resident’s self-worth by limiting their ability to reach out to family/friends in need. This class was to assist them to give without hurting their ability to remain stable and self-sufficient.
The class identified the problem not to be helping the invisible people in a family, but how the family chose to help the invisible people.
Example: Giving invisible people money will not help them, if they have problems with financial management.
Resolution: This invisible person should be armed with resources and programs that will assist them with financial issues. Receiving these resources could lead to housing, stability and opportunities they could not get from taking handouts from family members/family.
This would also make the invisible person independent and an asset to the Community LINC family in question.
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