On Saturday, March 22 the Government Center “T” (subway for you non-Bostonians) station officially closed for two years. The purpose of the project is to make much needed improvements to the stations accessibility, and to make other overdue upgrades to the old station. The full story from the MBTA can be found at the Government Center Station Closure page at MBTA.com here.

However, during the construction project, accessibility by public transportation to the immediate Government Center area including Boston City Hall will be limited. For those people with a limited ability to travel from the previous and next stations on the line, Park Street Station & Haymarket Station, the only option will be a shuttle bus.

That is why for the next two years, this page will count down the time to the expected reopening of the new and improved Government Center Station. Hopefully, I will be able to do my small part to keep the work on track.

That one question used to make me cringe. It reminded me of my Cerebral Palsy, something I used to wish that I could hide. It was an embarrassment, a mistake, a liability. That was not my reaction the other day though. It made me smile. These days I just see those questions as a teaching moment and move on.

What I realized was that I am still running around doing those daily chores. Yes I have a physical disability that limits how I do things, but it does not really limit what I do. It just means that I have to be more creative about how I do them. There are and there always will be people who are ignorant, either shunning me or being too helpful. Most people I have found however are willing to learn. If they are already asking questions, then that can only be a positive.

So I have a request for parents of young children. If they are honestly curious about why I walk the way I do, let them come up and ask. Yes it might or might not be taken the wrong way by some people if you do it, but most of the people I know who have visible disabilities would be happy to answer a question or two from a preschooler or kindergartener. I personally welcome all honest questions.

Over the course of working in the social service field and starting in on a hobby that I have found to very much still be a one to one personal relationship business, I have become more comfortable and effective on the phone. I do not however particularly enjoy handling logistics this way. I do not think it is a particularly effective use of time.

Web based and more personal communication styles such as phone calls or face to face meetings both have their place. The trick is balancing their usage, and choosing the correct communication style for the task. Most people become comfortable with one way of communicating and that is what they use. I will admit that I am guilty of this on occasion myself. If you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail and all that.

The trick, as with most things, is finding an effective balance. What I have found is that the phone is best used for communications that require either a personal international, or a long explanation of information. Text based communications such as e-mail or txting is much more effective for arranging logistics, those short exchanges of dates, times, and places, where it is critical that everyone has accurate details but that a personal touch is not particularly needed.

My general rule of thumb is to pick up the phone if I need information not generally available, and to send an email if I am arranging for something to be done. I have found that there is no need to interrupt someone and take up their time when making arrangements. Besides, it is always best to have a written copy that can be referred to when it is time to act on the arrangements you made. At the same time, when it is time to confer with someone on details, or you need to exchange ideas that take time to communicate, the phone is the better option.

The final decision of which type of communication to use, for me usually comes down to the choice between positives of real time conversation or correct future action, and the negatives of taking up time or delayed response.

I am an individual who goes to an agencies website for information first before any other communication. Other people might go to a website to refresh their memory or for updated information. No matter the reason, people will easily be put off by what they see as incomplete or seemingly broken content. Even if that was not your intent, that is the presentation that many social service websites present. I have listed below some of the most common issues that lead to this perception.

• Broken / Missing Links
• Half-finished pages
• Empty “Events” calendars
• Mismatched design elements
• The dreaded “Under Construction”

These are some of the fundamental mistakes, which individuals in the helping professions tend to make when designing or maintaining a website. It is not necessary to have a perfect site, or to focus on form to the impairment of function. However, just as one would proof read and edit a print document to make the best presentation possible, the you should take same care with a website.

The reason that helping professionals in particular have a tendency to miss these issues is that we have become desensitized to projects in progress. There is nothing inherently wrong with that way of thinking. A website should continually in progress, regularly being updated. The issue is with the presentation of the website that is viewable to the public. The final version of the site that is available to the public should not be, and does not need to be, the same as the in progress version being worked on. This is where a good CMS (Content Management System) such as WordPress (www.wordpress.org) comes in handy for managing drafts of posts and pages. Using drafts within your websites control panel properly will allow you to manage the final version of your site.

How do you make sure that your website is as polished as possible? It is actually a simple concept. Rather than writing out a list of every possible website editing issue that may come up, I will leave you with a way of thinking about your social service website that should serve you well in most situations. A draft is a draft, until it is no longer a draft. If a page, a post, an article, a link, has not yet been finalized, do not publish it to the live version of the website.

I have been guilty of this on myself. I have gotten a great idea for some piece of content and begun the process of posting it, only for it to sit unfinished for all to see for any number of reasons. One of the great advantages of the web is that content is not static. Content is dynamic. Unlike print or hard copy media like CDs, content on the web can be changed as situations change. However, that does not give license to leave a document incomplete. Simply put what it comes down to, if any content on a website is not complete, it should be removed. That link which goes to an Under Construction page, that menu item to a blank page, that half complete page, or that event page from last year, please remove them from your live website. That task alone will get you 90% of the way to a professional looking website, and visitors to your site will be much more likely to make a more meaningful contact with you.

I hope these thoughts will help you finish that final clean up on your social services website, and ultimately help you provide your information to more people. Remember, if you have any comments, questions, or feedback, please feel free to reply to this post or contact me.

Would you put an inexperienced twenty-one year old recent college grad into a job intended for a Masters level professional? That is what many human service non-profits are doing in this economy. Many organizations who help at risk populations such as the poor or disabled are finding large financial incentives to do just that. They take in volunteers from programs like AmeriCorps and City Year, but many of them do not have full time work that a brand new B.A. could do. So they are turning positions which would normally be offered to a new Master of Social Work specializing in program management or a Master of Public Administration into volunteer spots. Non-Profits can pay these volunteers a stipend between $11,000 and $14,000 a year as opposed to the $40,000 to $50,000 plus benefits, which a new master’s level professional would demand, so you really cannot blame them. They are trying to make the most out of the resources available, and the young volunteers get a great experience to further their career. So what can be wrong with that? Well as these programs are set-up now, there are three parties being hurt to varying degrees.

The non-profits themselves are losing stability, continuity of service, and the ability to innovate with changing times. Organizations that would normally have professionals working for them for three to seven years, perhaps more, are dealing with yearly or bi-yearly turnover. Every year they have to retrain and help a new person gear up to being able to do the job. They do not have stable line staff that can try new things and innovate, because that staff does not have the experience to know what works and what does not. They lose the ability to evaluate and review the impact of their services over time because of changing personalities and skill levels of volunteers. So these non-profits are stuck giving the same basic training to volunteers and providing the same basic services every year, and things stagnate.

Clients of these non-profits are receiving lower quality services. Have you ever gone into a fast food restaurant when they are training the new kid? Everything runs slowly. Mistakes are unavoidable. The supervisor ends up being consulted every other customer. Imagine those same issues when you are trying to work with a career-counseling center or trying to have someone help you with your child’s special education issues. A newly minted MSW may not be the best at what they do, but it is guaranteed that they at least know enough to make a judgment call and really help you out. A twenty-one year old right out of college in a volunteer position like that is going to know to do only what they have been told to do. That is fine if your job is to push the picture of the cheeseburger, but that thinking breaks down when dealing with complex situations where you have to deal with the personality of a person while they are under stress and at the same time helping them come up with a solution to the facts of a problem.

New postgraduate professionals are losing job prospects. If you look at the nonprofit job section of Craigslist, you will currently find that the vast majority of the jobs posted are VISTA service opportunities or an equivalent, clinical per diem (pay per client counseling) jobs or are upper management spots. For those newly graduated Masters level professionals whose training is in human service program management, program design & evaluation, grants management, and advocacy, there are very few first jobs available right now. Those positions that would normally begin a career are turning into volunteer spots. I recently spoke with a young woman doing her second year Master’s internship. Her internship was originally going to be working on curriculum design for an after school program that works with children in special education. Her responsibilities were shifted to different responsibilities when she arrived because a twenty-one year old girl from a small town in the mid-west with no experience in that work was given the job. Part of this job description is supposed to be attending IEP (Individual Education Plan) meetings for some of the children in the program. The woman I spoke to ended up having to go to these meetings anyway because the volunteer in the position did not could not, have gained the knowledge needed to be involved in those meetings with the training she was given.

That is the hidden problem with AmeriCorps VISTA and other year of service volunteer programs. When applied to the proper job opportunities, they are an effective way of increasing the power of human services. However, the programs need to be reviewed to make sure that they are not placing volunteers into jobs they are not prepared for and harming the organizations accepting the placement, the clients of those organizations, and the professionals who should be preforming those duties for everyone’s benefit.

SPSS or as the new owners of the software IBM is trying to re-brand it, PASW (Predictive Analytical SoftWare) is a staple in the social science fields for research. Most students in the psychology, sociology, and social work fiends are trained in grad school how to use it. The problem is that it’s a pig. My two year old gaming computer that can handle games like Crisis, FarCry, and FEAR along side thousand plus entry website SQL databases chokes when I ask it to open SPSS ver. 16 and play around with the demo data sets. This is annoying, but what just floors me is that the official system requirements at www.spss.com are:

* Intel® or AMD x86 processor running at 1GHz or higher
* Memory: 1GB RAM or more recommended
* Minimum free drive space: 800MB***
* DVD drive
* Super VGA (800×600) or higher-resolution monitor

This is a joke. It has to be. A system meeting those minimum requirements may run the software, but it’s going to run like molasses. I know this is a fact, because as a social psychology undergrad research assistant I’ve run SPSS on a similar system in the lab. Frustrating is the most polite word I can come up with when remembering that task.

I don’t begrudge the designers of SPSS really. They’re statisticians and mathematicians. They put more effort into the back end statistical calculations then the core of the program. At least I hope that this is the case, because I do not and can not believe that a computer programmer who has respect for their work as an application designer ever looked at SPSS as a software package being used by real before before being looked at as a calculation tool.

For now, I am stuck trying to strike a balance between power and portability and find a laptop with enough power to run this beast of a program that is not so heavy that I’d sprain my wrist trying to pick it up one handed.

This is a good reminder to those people who use simple passwords. Use long and random passwords that could not be guessed. Here is a good article from Microsoft on how to create good passwords that are gibberish to anyone else, but still easy enough for you to remember. http://www.microsoft.com/protect/fraud/passwords/create.aspx

I realized after that experience that I get so much more work done when I’m in a space that’s actually designated for work. Such a revolutionary concept, right? Counselors have known this for years. We always tell teenagers that doing homework on your bed is a bad idea because you will either sleep terrible after that end of semester push, or you’ll be nodding off while trying to get your work done. I have the same problem writing papers at the same desk I play video games and making phone calls in the same room I veg out and watch T.V.

When I am at my internship, even with time for lunch and quick breaks, I have no problem getting a full six hours of actual work done in an eight hour day. At my apartment or at the coffee shop, four of every eight hours might be fairly productive, but not even close to the laser focus I can set on a task when I’m “at work”. Oh sure, I’ll get a project done, but it will take twice as long.

The answer to this problem is fairly obvious, office space. But of course most universities barely have enough desk space for professors, let alone grad students. So if we want functional work space, we will have to go out on our own. Many people think renting office space has to be hugely expensive, with rent, utilities, furniture, ect. It doesn’t have to be that complex. There are a few options graduate students can look at.

The first option grad students can consider a large step up from coffee shops are called Co-Working centers. These are big with techies and writers, but are still relatively unknown to most everyone else. Co-Working centers charge a monthly fee (typically $100-$500 depending on the package) for unlimited access to an open shared work space during business hours.

A list of operating co-working spaces in most US cities can be found at coworking.pbworks.com.

The next step up from Co-Working is Business Centers, sometimes called Executive Suites. These spaces run by companies such as Regus and Carr Workspaces offer leases on full-time offices down to what are called Virtual Offices in a managed space. A Business Center is usually comprised of a reception area with many small (100 sq ft or so) single and double occupancy offices leased separately. A customer would have access to their own office along with a common conference room and business services such as faxing. These offices can be rented either full-time or more importantly for our purposes, for a set number of hours per month. Depending on location, prices range from $95 to $300 a month for the use of a private office one day per week, plus a few hours a month of conference room access.

A final option that grad students should consider if they find the need for work space, is subletting. In the current economic times, many companies have empty desks. While colleges and universities are hurting for space, many large companies have unused space. If you have worked as an intern at a company or know a business owner, you could likely set your price for the use of empty desk space a day or two per week. You get space in an environment conductive to getting work done, and the company improves their image of a productive company. If you have a particular skill and a few hours free, it may even be possible to barter for the use of a desk during normal hours. The power is on anyway, someone might as well be using an empty desk or cubical.

So if you find yourself unhappily rubbing elbows at Starbucks during finals week, or you’re just sick of working in your bedroom, take a little bit of time to look at other options. You might be able to find yourself in a professional office being more productive than ever, all for the price of most cable T.V. packages.

The reason that this came up is that after only using fore-arm crutches to help me get around for near a decade, I have decided that I need to get a properly fitted wheelchair for simi-regular use to help me get around the city easier. I just want to be able to go more then a few blocks without being wiped out once I get there. So I decided to buy a custom ultra-light wheelchair.

Did some searching around, and found that I could get what I wanted for around $1,000 USD. I figured out pretty quick that I did not really want to do the measurements myself, so I figured it would be the best idea to work with one of the local vendors to help me get what I want. I finally find one after a couple of weeks of looking around. Come to find out they want customers to go to a physical therapist for an evaluation before they will do a fitting and help with an order. I think ok fine. I don’t really need it. I know my physical issues and can rattle them off any time of day, but ok we’ll do that.

Then I find out they really want to deal with insurance. I do have medical insurance. I have a pretty good one in fact, but I’d rather not have to deal with them for this. I have the money to spend on a wheelchair. I am a student and the money will be a little tight, but I’d rather just hand over a credit card and pay it off then deal with the aggravation of insurance paperwork. They don’t seen to get this concept. I am trying to give them money. I am trying to pay them for a service, and they don’t want to take it. As far as I am concerned this is not a medical issue, it’s a business transaction. None of these people seem understand that.

So to continue the story, following the vendors instructions I contact a physical therapist that does wheelchair evaluations. First thing out of the schedulers month is for first time evaluations, send us a doctors order and we will get you an appointment. I attempted to explain that while I have a disability, I do not need to see a doctor. I told them that I have insurance that does not require a referral to see a specialist, and baring that I would be happy to pay out of pocket. I would just like to get the process moving along. As of this post, it has been three days and I have yet to hear back from them.

I was born with CP (Cerebral Palsy). I have lived with it for 26 years now. I know what I need much better then any doctor I have ever seen. It should be a fairly simple process to buy a piece of equipment that would help me. I know what I need and what I want. But no. If I had been hit by a car a couple months ago and a doctor refereed me though the process I would have had a top of the line titanium chair by now. But having been born with a disability and not wanting to waste my time jumping through hoops that don’t apply to my situation, I am having a hard time being seen, even when I am attempting to shove money into their hand. So I can’t even order a basic custom chair that I would be comfortable with and that work perfectly for me right now, for the simple fact that I don’t need a physical right now, and don’t want to waste an afternoon or the money to have a doctor take one look at me and be ready write out an order for a wheelchair evaluation.

Could I waste an afternoon and the co-pay to have a doctor look at me for five minutes to move the process along? Yes I could. But I should not have to.