At a time in our Nation’s history, when volunteerism is being encouraged by the White House and statistics show the number of volunteers to be way up and rising, one would expect a gracious and warm reception by those chartered to provide critical services to those in need. Tragically, this is sometimes not the case. This is a brief story of an appalling lack of grace on the part of the Long Island Crisis Center in Bellmore New York: an organization that manages the “crisis hotlines” for the region.
While I haven’t volunteered at the Long Island Crisis Center, my wife, a Fordham trained, licensed social worker with advanced counseling skills, has done so. She committed to all their training and to requisite numbers of shifts over nine months ( many of them requiring early morning presence). She did so willingly and generously. Yesterday, she received a call (out of the blue and with no prior feedback that this was being considered) that she was “no longer needed” as they thought ” this wasn’t really for her”.
This was both unexpected and seemingly arbitrary. Since they have a fresh class of new recruits, I guess they just wanted to hold out for what they regard as most suitable ( whatever that means!!). What a disrespectful, unprofessional and cowardly approach. After nine months, they couldn’t even bring themselves to have a face to face conversation? This is not the behavior of empathic and skilled professionals. It is crude, cruel, & capricious conduct. And these are the folks training others to handle crises on the phone? Give me a break! Oh, not even a thank you. Local volunteers beware!
That is utterly bizarre.
It would seem that volunteers are treated as cattle or cannon fodder
A friend of mine years back used to do volunteer work for a national charity and got very little by way of even thanks, just more and more being pushed around and treated like dirt.
What are you planning to do to protest this?