Transcription of Safe Haven #43
Male: You are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour & Podcast, recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine in Portland, Maine and broadcast on 1310 AM Portland, streaming live each week at 11:00 AM on wlobradio.com. Show summaries are available at doctorlisa.org. Download and become a podcast subscriber of Dr. Lisa Belisle through iTunes. See the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page for details.
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Dr. Lisa: Hello. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle, and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour & Podcast, show number 43, Safe Haven, airing for the first time on July 8th 2012 on WLOB Radio 1310 AM, Portland, Maine. On today’s show, we will be speaking with Ethan Strimling, former Maine State Senator and CEO of LearningWorks in addition to, Michael Tarpinian who is also a CEO but of the Opportunity Alliance which is the Community Action Program agency for Cumberland County here on Maine. Sitting with me today is Genevieve Morgan, the wellness editor for Maine Magazine and also a woman of action and all about Safe Havens.
Genevieve: I’ve been feeling very safe in our little haven of our studio today.
Dr. Lisa: I think that’s important. We’ve create this very interesting little atmosphere where people come in. they feel safe and they talk to us about what’s going on, what they’re doing for the communities but there are lots of people in the world who don’t feel safe at all.
Genevieve: That’s true and I think that there’s so many different levels of comfort zone depending on what your life experience is and I think we’re going to learn about some of the people who are really, really living in an unstable situation here in Maine.
Dr. Lisa: We sort of… we made a point of bringing this into the conversation from very early on in the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour & Podcast. Some of our earliest guests were actually working with the city of Portland and with Preble Street and we’ve talked about people who are dealing with Safe Passage. It’s actually not the State of Maine but in Guatemala City. The fact is that there are a lot of people in world whose lives are inherently unstable.
Genevieve: I think you and I talk a lot about and I hope the listeners enjoy what we tell them about how to keep healthy and different choices that they have in the State of Maine to further their pursuits in well-being and feeling well, but let’s face it. If you don’t have enough to eat, if you’re in abusive situation, if you don’t have shelter or warmth or clean water, it’s very hard to even begin to think about pursuing well-being. At the very least, I think our show … I mean at the very most or the very least is about those core elements of how to keep people safe because that’s where it all begins, safe and fed.
Dr. Lisa: Right. We’ve had a couple of shows where we have talked about the importance of feeding people and of share our strength and we’ve talked about plenty in abundance. The fact is that we all have the ability to impact the lives of people in our community that aren’t as stable as ours. Even as unstable as our own lives may feel, this is why, on our show, we bring guests in to talk about other members of the community who are also fellow human beings who are trying to make their own ways in the world in whom may benefit from an outreach.
Genevieve: I think too what we’ve been hearing over and over again after 42 shows is that even a small contribution, something that you might not even really miss or know that you’re doing, can really change someone’s day, it can change the one’s aspect, it can change just a helping hand. At the right moment can fundamentally impact somebody else that you never know what impact your life as an individual is going to have on all the others around you. I feel very strongly that you and I have put out this message every week, that showing up and being there and actually giving people a little safe haven on a weekly basis, just people around you, can actually have a huge impact.
Dr. Lisa: I completely agree. It’s not even just giving of money. We’ve talked about this again with Safe Passage. It’s giving of yourself and the book that we created Our Daily Tread where people gave quotes or they contributed art work or they had been to Guatemala and volunteered down there or people with Maine Magazine who helped put together the Kennebunkport Festival to bring money in for a Share our Strength, the hunger relief organization in Maine. It really is about doing whatever you can as an individual. Even if that just means doing what you can one on one as an individual and having compassion for people around you.
It doesn’t have to be a big-time commitment. You don’t have to volunteer to tutor children for 40 hours a week. You can maybe tutor children a little bit or you can at least try to get to know the people in your community who may not exist in your social sphere.
Genevieve: In this month’s Maine Magazine, in the Wellness column, I interviewed Kate Braestrup who we had on our celebration show. She has a wonderful philosophy that she learned after being widowed which is just to love. Start loving now, today, the people right in front of you. Love meaning aspiring for the wholeness of the beloved or the person that you’re next to. It could be a spouse, it could be a sibling, it could be a neighbor but think about what they want to do in the world and just try to help them out a little, give them a ride, talk to them, offer them some tea.
Like you said, it doesn’t have to be … you have taken in your practice helping people to a much more professional level but it can be very personal and it can be intimate. It can be a neighbor down the street who just wants you to knock on their door and say hello and bring them the paper.
Dr. Lisa: I agree and I do think sometimes what happens is we decide that somebody else’s life is not maybe is “good as ours or it’s not a right life”, and sometimes we believe that helping people involves changing them. Really, it’s not our job to change other people necessarily. Maybe sometimes it is but sometimes it is just as simple as sitting with somebody and as Dr. Ann Skelton was talking about, when she’s dealing with laboring women, just being present. Sometimes I’ll get into situations which are really hard for me where I want to take on someone’s pain or I’ll feel I should somehow take action when somebody has a problem that they present me with.
I have to mentally close my eyes and just give them compassion. That’s all that I can do, is be present and give them compassion and not attempt to change them and not really go any further than just being there with them. That’s really hard. People don’t realize how hard it is to just sit and listen to somebody else talk or understand somebody else’s world without trying to bustle in there and … I don’t know “Make a difference.”
Genevieve: Right. Sometimes that makes it about one’s self instead of the person that’s talking and that needs the help. Sometimes just sitting there and listening is the best thing you can do because you’re not interjecting your own personality or your own needs or your own concerns or projections into that conversation. I think it’s funny that you and I both, when we come to tape the show, we do have this feeling that we have created this little safe haven just within our little group because safe havens can be any variety but really what it is, is just a supporting network of people who care. I guess that’s the best word, care.
Dr. Lisa: I do know that the people who are speaking with us today, Ethan Strimling, who is the former Maine State Senator and current CEO of LearningWorks and also Michael Tarpinian who is the Chief Executive Officer of the Opportunity Alliance, which is the Community Action Program agency for Cumberland County, both of these individuals care. They care deeply. They not only are present with the individuals who are seeking change, they make possible the change itself. They keep showing up. They have been very successful in the works that they have done and they haven’t ever given up hope.
I believe that they are going to talk to us about the type of safe haven that we really hope for the State of Maine and really, all over the world. Those of you who are listening today, thank you for joining us.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour & Podcast is pleased to be sponsored by the University of New England. With the University of New England, we offer a segment we call Wellness Innovations. This week’s Wellness Innovation points out the fact that childhood traumatic experiences are associated with adult irritable bowel syndrome symptoms. Patients with irritable bowel syndrome or IBS have a significantly greater prevalence of early adverse life events. According to a new study in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association, emotional abuse was the strongest predictor of IBS.
Early adverse life events refer to traumatic experiences during childhood, encompassing physical, sexual, or emotional abuse as well as discordant relationships with a primary care taker or the loss of a parent. These events appear to be associated with an increased vulnerability toward developing functional gastrointestinal disorders including IBS.
For more information on this wellness innovation, visit doctorlisa.org. For more information on the University of New England, visit une.edu.
Male: This portion of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour & Podcast has been brought to you by the University of New England – UNE, an innovative health sciences university grounded in the liberal arts. UNE is the number one educator of health professionals in Maine. Learn more about the University of New England at une.edu.
Dr. Lisa: Today on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour & Podcast, our focus is on Safe Haven and our first guest is Ethan Strimling, former State Senator and CEO of LearningWorks, which is a dynamic community-based organization which started in 1967 as a grassroots neighborhood advocacy movement to protect the working people of the West End and never stopped moving forward with the community. Today, LearningWorks is a social service agency that serves people all over Androscoggin, York, and Cumberland counties. They serve young children, at-risk youth, and low-income families. Thank you for coming in today, Ethan.
Ethan: Thanks. I’m glad to be here.
Dr. Lisa: You’ve been doing different types of work for Maine for … it sounds like a good chunk of your career.
Ethan: Yes, absolutely.
Dr. Lisa: You’re pretty young now, right?
Ethan: Yeah. I’m 44.
Dr. Lisa: You’ve been working in the public service arena most of your …
Ethan: Yeah. At some level or another, either politics, or public service, either working on campaigns or I’ve been running LearningWorks. It used to be called Portland West and I’ve been running that for about 15 years now. As you mentioned, it’s been around for about 45 years doing the work and we’ve really become this educational institution where we really focus on …
There are two kinds of agencies. One who are providing fish a lot of the shelters and the soup kitchens and the others that are teaching people to fish and you really work hand in hand and we’re on the teaching-people-to-fish side and we work with, as you mentioned, at-risk kids who are in elementary school or adolescents who have dropped out of school, kids who are in jail. Then, we also work with a lot of adult, immigrants, and refugees who have just arrived here looking to learn English to try to build some stability in their lives.
Dr. Lisa: What was it about your background that caused you to believe so strongly in the importance of public service?
Ethan: I’m not sure exactly. Both of my parents, neither of them are really in the political side of things but they both are very politically active as I was growing up. My mother is a teacher. She’s a professor at UCLA and she has always been a real activist as I was growing up, really around the feminist movement. I grew up in New York City with my father and he was very involved in nuclear disarmament and international policy and trying to calm the world down a little and make it a little bit safer. Both of them I think instilled in me a real commitment and a need to do the kind of work that feels close to your heart, whatever that is so that’s probably where it began.
Dr. Lisa: How did you … it seems like an interesting thing to be the former State Senator and then begin working for this organization that is really about social services. What was the connection? How did that happen?
Ethan: I’ve done both jobs at the same time. I’ve been at LearningWorks for 15 years and for six years while I was there, I served as a State Senator as well because our legislature is a part-time legislature so you try to do both. They’ve actually been a good … it’s a good parallel path because every day, I’d go into LearningWorks in the morning before I go up to the legislature and it helps you to feel very connected to what it is you’re trying to accomplish.
When you walk into a building and you walk in with a kid who’s being brought to you from jail, it gives you a certain perspective when you go up to the legislature to make decisions about how it is that we help young people turn their lives around or when you walk in with a new immigrant who is just learning to speak English for the first time, trying to support their family, it gives you a different perspective or some young adult who’s trying to get into the work force. When they are making minimum wage and you know that minimum wage is so small and you’re taking a vote on minimum wage, it helps you to understand and say, “Look.”
The world of politics is a very … it’s invaluable when it’s imperative we have good-thinking people who are there but it is true that you get a little disconnected in that world. You’re a little bit sheltered. Having the work that I do at LearningWorks everyday helped me to stay committed to what it is that we wanted to accomplish.
Dr. Lisa: It’s the sense of higher purpose that you … despite all of the things that happen in politics that can be a little distasteful or a little onerous, you were able to look towards the sense of higher purpose to keep being motivated.
Ethan: Sure. I think both are higher purpose and I think you lose it sometimes in politics which is maybe what you’re referring to. Although I don’t really … I wouldn’t impugn people in politics to say that even though I disagree fundamentally, I’m a Democrat and I’m a progressive Democrat and I disagree fundamentally with really conservative Republicans but I don’t ever impugn that their desire … they want to kids to learn just as much as I do and they want there to be jobs in the economy just as much as I do.
They just have a different way of going about it in ways that we disagree but I don’t think their purpose is less high than mine. I think my grounding comes from LearningWorks, their grounding may come from town meetings where people are talking about their property tax bills or their grounding may be comes from the small business they’re running that feels the owner is burdened of government regulations or whatever it is. They could work in the outdoors and the environment is that thing that grounds them. We all have that thing and we all need to stay connected to it.
Genevieve: As you know, Lisa and I are also working hard in the community to support a broad idea of health. Health can mean many things to many people but I’m interested, in particular, with LearningWorks. It’s hard to say politics aside but right now, at this moment in time, there’s argument about who should be providing services whether services are even necessary. Why does it matter for the health of the community to have an organization like LearningWorks in the community? What does it do?
Ethan: It matters in a lot of ways. We have developed in this country and I think it’s very healthy these relationships with a lot of not-for-profits. Instead of government actually providing the service, we look often to not-for-profits. In other countries, they’d be called NGOs, non-governmental organizations that provide the service. Often times, you’re more flexible with the not-for-profit, you can make decisions more quickly, there’s less bureaucracy going around because once they distribute the money to you, it’s already gone through the bureaucracy. Now, you just have to meet the outcomes.
Organizations like LearningWorks or Preble Street or the Opportunity Alliance or Sweetser or all of these organizations have much more ability to be flexible and react to what’s going on in the community without having to weigh all the other concerns that somebody who’s an elected office has to. That’s role that not-for-profits play. It’s very smart. We don’t need to have more or fewer government employees. It doesn’t really matter. What you need is to make sure you get the resources as close to the community as possible.
A place like LearningWorks where right on the street or right in the middle of the neighborhood where a place that people can walk to or place that people can access easily and we can react quickly. Plus, because we’re private, I can have standards for my employees in terms of how it is that we’re going to meet the expectations of the grants and be very clear about those. An area where I feel not-for-profits where we have not been as good as we should have in the past is really having clearer expectations in terms of what are the outcomes we expect. It can’t be enough that the person is having a better day today than they had yesterday.
It has to be deeper than that. At least for my organization, it has to be our expectation is that you’re going to have a job by the time you’re done. What do I need to do to work backwards to get you the skills to get there? I want you to go to higher education. What do I have to do working backwards to get you the skills to get there? Really having clear outcomes.
Genevieve: I’m not to be too pedantic about this but if I’m a resident of the West End, what does making sure that a kid who is 17, coming out of jail, that they have a job? How does that pay back to me ultimately? In my …
Ethan: It pays back to you in two ways. One, it doesn’t take from you. Obviously, it’s very, very expensive. To put a kid in Long Creek, in the youth center is it’s something like $400 a day. It’s just absurd, right? You could give somebody a very nice hotel for a lot less money. That doesn’t take that money out of your pocket, number one, but more importantly obviously is the long-term impact of that person being part of the community and I’m always also careful to make sure that we don’t just talk about this in financial terms, right?
It’s not just about that you have more money in your pocket. It’s also about you have a safer community. You have a more comfortable community. You have a higher quality of life. Those are all good things and are all things that we should want and that your investment and taxes should help you get, right? If I’m paying taxes in the community and it’s safe and I feel like my kids are getting a good education and they can get a job at the end of the day and the water is clean, well, then I’m not feeling so bad about the money that I’m paying. If I’m paying property taxes and I’m scared to go out at night or I feel like I got to send my kid to a private school because public school isn’t any good, that’s a problem, right?
Helping a young person change the direction of their life is not just a financial, not just financially better for you. It enhances your quality of life. It admits you a healthier life I would say.
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Dr. Lisa: The topic of the show is Safe Haven and do you think that there is some aspect of what you do that is providing a safe haven for the people who are coming in to see you who need help from your organization?
Ethan: You can define safe haven perhaps from its most traditional where it was … immigrants coming and being in the basement of a church so that they wouldn’t be prosecuted or the underground rail road. There’s that kind of safe haven and then I think there’s a world where for our kids, they have this … they’re living in a very unstable life right there. Homeless a lot of them, couch surfing, education has been 10th on the list in importance in their life, very much in survival. They don’t have the developmental assets that those of us who grow up in more middle-class families just gain just because we have that cultural upbringing.
LearningWorks, while we don’t create all the stability for them, we create a safe haven as you would say from that world and perhaps more importantly though, we begin to create some structure to help them move out of it. This is a good example of what I was trying to talk about earlier in terms of expectations. If we were merely a safe haven, I would say that’s not enough for what we are supposed to do. I think for Preble Street, for the teen center, that’s a safe haven, right? This is a place kids can just go and relax and try to tone out the world.
Our job is you come to us, yes, we wanted safe, we’re going to make sure you have food so that you’re not worried about that piece. If there’s abuse going on in your life, we will try to help you take care of that. If you have serious substance abuse issues, we’re going to help you try to work through those but ultimately understand that all of that is about you now taking different steps in your life to walk a different path, to move away from what it is you grew up in, to try to break that cycle of generational poverty because kids, like everybody, get caught up and then the kids we work with, their parents were poor, their grandparents were poor, probably their great grandparents.
It’s this cycle that you see over and over again that nobody breaks and that’s what our job is. I enjoy working. I enjoy the accomplishment of it. I enjoy the ultimate outcome of being able to understand somebody’s life. Somebody has found a better path due to some structure that I was able to help put in place.
Dr. Lisa: Do you think your enthusiasm for work actually helps the people that are coming in as part of LearningWorks because you can say to them, “Look. Here is something that I find very enjoyable and it’s work. Maybe if you find a work, this will be very enjoyable for you as well.”
Ethan: Yeah. I think so. Probably. Although some of my staff might tell me that I need to go home more often because it feels like I’m setting a model that’s not the model they’re going to be able to hit but I think that’s probably fair. We certainly try to say to our students and all the staff of LearningWorks, I think, really like the work that they do and we’ve been very careful to hire people who fit the job. Often times, you’ll hire somebody who is 80% right and then you’ll say, “Well, I’ll fill in the last 20%.” A great lesson for me is to not do that anymore. To say, “Take the time. Find the right person for the job. You’re going to, in the end, find somebody who’s better equipped to do it, who perhaps sets a better model.”
Then, you can look to other areas that you can try to find to improve. I think our staff does a very good job of … they’re in the right place. They’re doing the job that they’re wanting to do, that they’re good at doing and I think that model is well for the kids.
Genevieve: My older brother is an environmentalist out in California and he has been doing it for about 30 years, to stay hopeful and to serve … in the back of your mind, a larger purpose. It’s really about this day-to-day skirmishes and the day-to-day triumphs and not the, “I did it. We’re going to win the war but you’re going to win the battles,” and I’m wondering if that’s something that keeps you going every day. It’s not necessarily that you’re going to accomplish everything in one lifetime but you’ll win the day.
Ethan: Yeah. Although I would say that winning the … because you lose a lot of battles in this work so you have to, at some level, stay both in politics and in social service work. You have to, at some level, stay focused on the bigger picture. You have to stay focused at some level on the war as it were because you could lose great hope based on the number of … if I took every day and went into our alternative high school and felt every day success or failure, there’s a lot more failures every day than successes, right? There’s a lot more, right?
We will have 50 kids enrolled in a program and 20 may show up, right? That’s 30 failures. Of those 20 that show up or 25 that show up, three or four might not make it through the day because it was just too rough or another three or five might get stoned at lunch. There’s another five or six failures, right? Do I get focused on the 15 successes? Of course. Those are very exciting but you have to continue, I think, at some level to understand the world is a world of failure and we’re trying to break that cycle.
In politics it’s certainly the same way. You work on legislation, you try to create something that’s very important, you try to get your colleagues to vote with you, to do what you consider to be the right thing and sometimes that works and more than not, that doesn’t work but you stay focused on the bigger picture of what it is you’re trying to … where you’re trying to move the ball.
Dr. Lisa: Ethan, how can people find out more about LearningWorks?
Ethan: Two ways. Website, learningworks.me is certainly a great way but the best way to find out about us is to volunteer. If you want to understand what people are going through or you want to get more connected to the kind of work that we’re doing, I just encourage folks even if it’s an hour or two a month to come in and tutor somebody or to do some community service with a kid. We have a program where kids have to … they get 40 hours of community service from the court or something. They come to us and we structure some activity for them to do and we have volunteers come and help. It will change your life.
It will just give you a very different perspective on what people … we all say to ourselves that we know people I think, that we know people who are poor or I was poor and certainly, there was a time when I was growing up that I was poor, right? My parents split. My mother was in getting her PhD, right? She’s living on student loans. My father is an unemployed actor in New York City, right? We’re very poor but … and so I can talk about that but that’s nothing compared to what’s … that’s situational, right?
Both of my parents came from middle-class families. Lots of books in the house, lots of cultural conversations, lots of drive and ambition, so I can be situationally poor but that’s very different than generationally poor. That’s where you just start to learn about a different culture and a different climate. That’s the best way for people to understand what we do, is to just come and volunteer and we have a very easy process for people to come in and we can set up a schedule that works for you.
Dr. Lisa: Good. We have been speaking with Ethan Strimling, former State Senator and CEO of LearningWorks here in Portland’s West End and actually all of our Southern Maine now, so thank you so much for coming in and speaking with us today and also for the good work that you’re doing for the State of Maine.
Ethan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Thanks and I appreciate the invitation.
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Dr. Lisa: On today’s Dr. Lisa Radio Hour & Podcast, we are having a conversation with Michael Tarpinian who is the Chief Executive Officer of the Opportunity Alliance which is the Community Action Program agency for Cumberland County. The Opportunity Alliance partners with communities and individuals to deliver a full spectrum of social services and mental health care. The most interesting thing to me is that you’re a long-time Mainer. Maybe that shouldn’t be the most interesting thing but as somebody who has lived in Maine all of my life and been interested in social aspects of the community for a long, long time, I feel a kindred spirit in front of me.
Michael: I have to tell you it is nice to find another long-time Mainer as well. I was born and raised in Portland. Had an opportunity to go away to school for four years and then came back and I’ve been here ever since. I have deep roots in Portland and it’s an even better opportunity for me to work in the social service field in the town which I grew up.
Dr. Lisa: You went to Cheverus, is that right?
Michael: I did. In those days, it was a Catholic school and it is still today but it was very different. Each neighborhood had a local Catholic Grammar Schools and junior highs and it was the feeder system to Cheverus. I think my senior year, my tuition was I think $250. I think so it was a very … it had a very different feel.
Dr. Lisa: Did that impact, the Catholic high school education, did that impact your interest in social services as you were …
Michael: I have to tell you. The Jesuits obviously had an influence at least on social justice and inspired me to go Jesuit college in Upstate New York called Le Moyne College. At that time, we had a couple of professors Phillip and Dan Berrigan who were major initiatives around the anti-Vietnam war. I began to get some sense of social justice and came back to Portland and had an opportunity to begin work at the Cerebral Palsy Center in Portland as an aide in the classroom.
Dr. Lisa: You’ve seen a lot of different angles of social justice? You’ve seen cerebral palsy. Obviously, that’s more directly health-related but now what you’re doing with the Opportunity Alliance really it has … it spans quite a large area. Tell us what the Opportunity Alliance actually does and how did this come to be?
Michael: The Opportunity Alliance really is a combination of three mergers that occurred since 2006. Youth Alternatives which was the organization that I worked at since 1988, was a typical child and family service, child welfare agency, group homes, foster care, family mediation, a lot of work with families. 2006, the exec at Ingraham leaves and the board decides to explore options and they decide that they want to merge with Youth Alternatives.
In 2006, we merged with Ingraham which is an adult mental health agency and that has a whole host of adult mental health services that came with it. Then 2011, PROP’s Executive Director, Suzanne McCormick left to become the Executive Director of United Way of Greater Portland. The PROP Board went through a similar process and decided that maybe it made sense to move forward with us and as a result of those three mergers, we decided to come up with a new name and new mission, new values.
Today, we’re the Opportunity Alliance. We’re very focused although we have a few programs statewide, we’re very focused in Cumberland County. We have about 500 employees. We have an annual budget of about 37 million and we have 50 programs that have a wide range of impact both on the prevention side, intervention side, and treatment but we are Community Action agency. For your viewers, that came out of 1967 with Lyndon Baines Johnson in the war against poverty. We have a unique set of a tripartite governance board but also we come with this advocacy piece that isn’t just so much that we’re advocating for people but our goal is to be able to have people advocate for themselves, to feel good about who they are, and to be able to find their voice.
You can only do that if you do the work in the community where they’re at. We’re in various places throughout Greater Portland and Cumberland County that people don’t have to come to us but we’re there with them, listening to what they say they need and then trying to figure out how to do that with them. It’s a very different view.
Dr. Lisa: Now, with the merger, you have become the prime, first line of emergency response. Obviously, there are the police and the fire department but when someone is really suffering a trauma or crisis in the moment, you have the hotlines and you run the response?
Michael: Yes. There’s a unique piece that each of the organizations that came, their culture and one of the cultures of Ingraham obviously, aside from being adult mental health is that they came with a wonderful experience doing call centers. We are the contract agency for crisis services for adult mental in Cumberland County. We run … we oversee a hotline called 7774 Help. That is a hotline that we take in about 25,000 or so calls a year. Some of those calls result in actual on-site assessments or going out to where the individuals are for assessments. Some of them end up in hospitalizations. Some end up in some of our facilities but we’ll respond to about 25,000.
In addition to that, behind the scenes, we operate the call center for 211. 211, as you know, is the United Way brand for information and referral that is a statewide call in center and is also a national initiative by United Way of America. We answer about 80,000 calls on an annualized basis, 24/7. Both are 24/7 call-ins and that is also a way to connect to people, to one another and more importantly I think to services when they need them. It’s challenging but for many for them, it is not their first call. There is a level of comfort really knowing that we are there.
We also do something in conjunction with Sweetser. Sweetser operates what we call a Warm Line and that’s the peer services line. When somebody calls in who just needs to talk with somebody, who may not be at that place where they need intervention, we literally can transfer because they are sitting next to our crisis workers. It is a wonderful opportunity to be connected and it’s also, I think, a finely recognition on us that peers can play a role in supporting people through crisis. It’s been an invaluable addition to our system.
Male: We’ll return to our interview after acknowledging the following generous sponsors: Dr. Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists in Falmouth, Maine, makers of Dr. John’s granola cereal. Find them on the web at orthopedicspecialists.me.com.
Dr. Lisa: What do you think it is that causes people to feel disconnected and to need the sense of connection? What causes people to call up and need a Warm Line?
Michael: I think part of it is isolation. It is as simple as we have an area in South Portland that we’ve been working for three years. It’s place-based services. By that, we mean all of our services are on the ground, in the neighborhoods and we have supper nights. We bring people in the neighborhood to break bread. It sponsored and donated in volunteers by Wright Express. They go out and they do all these work because they’re in the community. They’re in South Portland. We have these every other month and people come out and they begin to feel connected with one another. If somebody is missing, they know they’re missing.
That sense of isolation is removed. That’s our focus. As an organization, we have a lot of programs but some of it is just simple stuff. I think we’re excited about the potential of where we’re going with some of these.
Dr. Lisa: It seems to me that part of and with what you do, is help people understand that they’re not alone but also help people understand that there are a lot of other people just like them and that there isn’t really an other. We aren’t others to each other.
Michael: That’s right.
Dr. Lisa: What is it that switches people into a sense of caring for another person? A sense of empathy and then perhaps even like yourself devote their life to helping others.
Michael: I know for me, it was very simple. My parents were great teachers in recognizing that no matter how difficult life was in the moment, there were always those that were less fortunate. You can either stand on the side lines and watch the parade or you can be in the parade. I think for … I can only speak for Portland, Greater Portland although Maine is really, in many ways, a small city. People respond to people in need. They do. They respond in a bigger way if they know the individual.
It seems like we’re only one degree of separation from each other. I think that’s part of it that people recognize that no matter how difficult they may think they have it, they know there are those that are less fortunate, they want to do something about it. Portland, in particular, is a giving place and we care about one another. We may have different political views, we may have different ways of doing things but at the end of the day, people care about whether or not somebody has enough heat, enough food, if there’s housing, and they respond.
I think that’s why some of us, if not all of us, do it. I happen to get paid to do it and that’s a great … I’ve had a great run. There are so many people who do the work every day, who are volunteers and who are just community members who look in on their neighbors to make sure that they’re okay. This is a great place to live and we’re very fortunate that way.
Dr. Lisa: You have two daughters. You and your wife, Nancy, you live in Westbrook currently?
Michael: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: You have two daughters?
Michael: I do.
Dr. Lisa: You’ve also made as part of your life’s focus, children, children and families. You served as the chair for the Children’s Committee for the Maine Association of Mental Health Services. You’re a member and past chairperson of the New England Steering Committee of the Child Welfare League of America and you’re a peer reviewer for the council on Accreditation for Child and Family Services which is also a national organization. Why are children so important to you?
Michael: Children are fascinating to me. They’re the next and there’s an innocence about them and a wonderment I guess if you will, and curiosity that adults don’t carry around. I think that’s a major piece of why I do that work. There’s also an innocence and we have an opportunity to give them a safe place to play and shame on us if we don’t. Then, that can take a lot of forms and shapes on how that gets exercised but I think it’s important that the curiosity of life, the sense of security in order to be able to do that and the sense of safety. Unfortunately, a significant portion of my work life has been working with children who haven’t felt safe, and trying to put their life back together in a way that it is more positive.
On my home life, I have a wonderful partner of 37 years who’s a second grade teacher. She helps me formulate that view of nurturing and safety and curiosity about learning and experiencing life.
Dr. Lisa: My son Wyeth had the pleasure of being your wife’s student in second and third grade. I know from his experience that she helps her students incorporate a lot of these values that we’re talking about. How do you and she show kids or give them the room to experience these kinds of nurturing safe feelings? How do you both go about that?
Michael: I think one of the things that I have observed with Nancy is that while the reading and the writing is absolutely critical, the experiential learning part of what she does is absolutely … she was this probably the most important piece and so just talking about certain things. Does it quite do it? You have to live it. You have to experience it. Similarly, in nurturing, one has to feel safe, one has to feel hugs, one has to feel that they can express things in appropriate way. At the same time, there’s a comfort level in structure that if a child is living in a chaotic world, that sense of safety goes away.
It’s a combination of a bendable structure that has a lot of love and empathy and at the same time, affords children the experience of learning and experiencing things for the first time. Then, talking about what that is and how it feels and spending time with your children is critical. It’s not just about doing things but it’s being with them. We’re fortunate that we have both of our families are living here and so our children also have had the good fortune of experiencing Nancy’s parents and my parents as well as also watching that interesting interplay that goes on between adult parents and adult children.
Dr. Lisa: What types of I guess advice can you offer to parents who are feeling as if maybe they’re falling short somehow as if maybe they are not able to create the safe haven for their children that is more ideal?
Michael: If they’re concerned about the safe haven, then I think they need to reach out and they can do it in multiple ways. They can reach out to a teacher or a professional to get advice. They can clearly reach out to their physician. If that is not an option, then they clearly can call 774-HELP and that will get … or 211 and that will get people to where they need to be. They can also call the Opportunity Alliance directly at 874-1175 and that will get people to our intake process and I think they need to just also talk with their friends. They need to be able to reach out to somebody. Don’t hold it in. Don’t isolate. I think if they are religious and they have faith and they have a minister, I think they should reach out to him or her. I think my advice is never just hold on to it.
Dr. Lisa: Now, this is going just slightly different and sometimes more difficult to hear about subject but what if you are someone who believes that there is an abuse situation going on within a family? Say you’re not required to report it. You’re not a doctor, you’re not a teacher, you suspect there might be abuse going on in a home, and it’s hard. How would you suggest that? How would you suggest go about doing that?
Michael: Here’s how I’ve handled it. Occasionally, we have allegations regarding our staff and so, I don’t make judgments. My job is not to investigate. My job is to clearly report. I would strongly suggest that if there is any issues related to the whether or not you’re questioning the safety of a child, you should call the Department of Human Services. Let that process determine whether or not there’s safety issues. If you’re not quite sure of really it’s reached that point, I think again it’s a question of reaching out to people that you are comfortable with.
I think all of us have from time to time in the shopping, doing grocery shopping have found that mother or father of two or three children, trying to do the grocery shopping in a chaotic sense and occasionally, in those instances, I’ll simply go up and say, “Is there anything I can do to kind of help you through this process?” It’s a neighbor-to-neighbor piece as opposed to some know-it-all trying to tell another person how to do it. I think that’s the piece that, I think, if I can impart on your audiences is that it’s simply … it’s view the world as neighbor to neighbor.
Genevieve: I want to talk a little bit about why people don’t do that and I think it has to do with the shame and I’m interested how Opportunity Alliance in building community counteracts that sense of shame that people may feel either in reporting or actually feeling like they’re, as Lisa said, that they’re not doing a great job or maybe even endangering somebody that they love.
Michael: One of the things that we try to do and I’m not sure if we talked about it earlier is that we want to go as far upstream as possible in working with communities. We don’t want to be perceived as those people coming in only when there is some child that’s hurt or some child that’s there is some safety issues and we’re in the community. I’m literally. We have office space in various neighborhoods and so people see us every day and we see them every day. We can intervene so early on if we’re there that it is not even close to being an issue around safety but it is an issue around maybe parenting.
We also hold parenting education classes for our folks in the neighborhoods. It really is less about policing and more about relationship building. When you build those relationships, people are more likely to come to you sooner than it is to be afraid that there will be some ramification for telling you something.
Dr. Lisa: How can people learn more about the Opportunity Alliance?
Michael: We’ve got the website, www.opportunityalliance.org and they can call obviously our number at 874-1175 and talk to our staff who are there.
Dr. Lisa: We appreciate your coming in and speaking with us today. We’ve been talking to Michael Tarpinian who is the Chief Executive Officer of the Opportunity Alliance which is the Community Action Program agency for Cumberland County here in Maine. Thank you for being a part of what we’re doing.
Michael: Thanks for having me.
Dr. Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour & Podcast, show number 43, Safe Haven, airing for the first time on July 8th 2012 on WLOB Radio 1310 AM, Portland, Maine. Today’s show featured discussions with Ethan Strimling, former Maine State Senator and CEO of LearningWorks in Portland, in addition to Michael Tarpinian CEO of the Opportunity Alliance which is the Community Action Program agency for Cumberland County. For more information on Ethan Strimling or Michael Tarpinian or their organizations, please visit the Dr. Lisa website at doctorlisa.org.
We hope that you are gleaning lots of useful information about safe havens and wellness and our broad approach to health on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour & Podcast through our weekly podcast. Please be sure to download any past podcast that you have not had access to through iTunes. Like us on our Facebook, Dr. Liza page. Visit doctorlisa.org for additional information on the show or read our bountiful blog on bountiful-blog.com. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. Thank you for being part of our world. May you have a bountiful life.
Male: The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour & Podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors: Maine Magazine, Mike LePage and Beth Franklin at Re/Max Heritage, Robin Hodgskin at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists in Falmouth, Maine, Booth, UNE – the University of New England, and Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour & Podcast is recorded in downtown Portland at the offices of Maine Magazine on 75 Market Street. It is produced by Kevin Thomas and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Editorial content produced by Genevieve Morgan. Audio production and original music by John C. McCain. Our assistant producer is Jane Pate.
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