rjmarek's blog

Who is this gentleman that has done so much for marginalized people in India and Pakistan? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fazle_Hasan_Abed

I can only applaud his richness of spirit and ability to focus on twin goals of poverty alleviation and self sustainment. Impressive.

Nature favors abundance:

The peacock, nest building by the male for the female, the sun and thermal vents in the sea. Scarcity promotes violence and duplicity.

Humanity takes the accumulation of abundance to excess with its ability to accumulate wealth.
Slavery represents the worst form of weaponized economics, where the cost of overseeing a slave is less than the cost of free labor.

What lesson can be learned from slavery where the availability of tractable human life is a resource? Can we mitigate the burden for those who want to be free to work?

This excerpt if from the Campbell Collaboration (My discussion is below the excerpt):
https://www.campbellcollaboration.org/library/impact-of-financial-inclus...

The aim of every social work intervention is to improve the client's functioning within the social context layers that the client effects and is affected by. Research in Social Work can utilize the researcher's presumed involvement to help delineate better treatment approaches as well as the clinician's perception of the social and individual gains of the clients under review.

Reflection on what social work has lost when it lost access to financial inventory

ECONOMY & BUSINESS
The Division of Labor Is the Meaning of Life
By KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON
April 14, 2019 6:30 AM

The historical origins of capitalism shed light on our current crisis.
I would like you to entertain, for a moment, an idea that might sound a little eccentric, or maybe as plain and obvious as a thing can be. It is this:

The division of labor is the meaning of life.

I do not mean this metaphorically or analogically, but literally.

Homeostasis requires that we balance our living. In poverty, a client has money and squanders it, developing a taste for spending but not for living with money. CGC reconditions the individual to deal with a financial shortfall in the immediacy of need, thereby changing the conditioning of spending as a habit to a habit of utility proactivity. It breaks the homeostasis and keeps the client open to a new way of regarding money.

Done correctly, the individual is awakened to having saved money to reduce future anxiety (as the reward).

In addition to financial interventions, we use psychological interventions that have been shown to help the clients in our practice. CBT and DBT are effective for some clients and some practitioners use them regularly. Mindfulness and the biosocial theory of anxiety have been exceedingly useful in clinical practice.

In a desire for justice and for the sake of unity, some social leaders have thrown their hands up in the air and said, “Change is impossible in this present climate with the government corruption at unprecedented levels.” Perhaps it is time to step aside and not interfere with those are doing the work.

‘All talk’ and criticism has never led to action or change. Leaders encourage and rarely criticize the actions of others, even their enemies.

To be useful to the client, the end user, CGC must be disposable; it must be discarded once the client's life - living has restarted.
Fungible as money itself is.
As water and soil nutrients to a growing plant.

Throughout social work history and proto-history of its formation, social workers have had the ability to help the individual monetarily. It is only over the last 60 years that social work has eschewed the idea of actually being directly involved in the transaction. We have preferred to advocate at the public level for benefits and grants

Truly early social workers did not have the purse strings directly in their hands, but they were undeniable influencers.

The human mind needs words as well as visuals to function.
Neurolinguistic Programming operates from this principle.
We need words to make a complete human experience, without words our clients have difficulties with reality assimilation. Social work's province is community where reality meets nurturance, growth and safety.

A defect in Social work is the neglect of access to financial capital in a reliable and authoritative manner. This access is also the direct answer to Flexner’s challenge that social work does not have a tangible and exclusionary instrument of its own domain. The older generation is aversive to the use of giving money to clients. There is wisdom in this philosophy as money that comes from a personal account becomes onerous to both client and therapist, whether or not the money given is a loan or a gift.

Watching an old James Bond movie and 100,000 was a sum worth dying for; 2 million dollars was an enormous sum that involvedo an enormous effort of many men. The movie was from the 60's. So, villainy's expenditures are obviously a product of the times and reflect popular valuation. One movie put the value of a human assassination at a hundred pounds of gold, which in some measure keeps pace with inflation.

Everyone wants stability: rich, poor, intelligent & dumb. In and on the fabric of stability, we create the drama of our lives.

Regarding the use of financial intervention funded by an external source, it seems apparent that the need to consider repayment is not important. What is important in giving money to a client is the freedom to explore the significance of the utility of money in their lives.

A regular bank in function, accounting and income generating entity, in that it pays its own way, its employees, upkeep, etc., but is a non profit corporation, in that its members also receive counseling services on a regular basis - not for financial planning but for mental health issues. Their borrowing is repaid by subscription from donors either anonymous or as tax write off.

An analysis of aiding clients to become financially self reliant borrows analogously from the following medical intervention:

We do not change unless there is a mechanism that guarantees stability and a mechanism that allows change. In therapy we provide community, a sense of belonging that accepts the person as the person is, but also wants something better for the person.

Definition of financial surrogacy: an act by a social worker who supplies the financial needs of a client thereby allowing the client to have control of their finances.

People in every culture balance the distribution of the satisfaction of needs versus managing the unknowable.

CBT Financial. Oh, the enjoyment I've had administering to my clients in need. In my case I started a non-profit so that there was accountability on a formal scale but each social worker does it on their own. I want to show you how a client moves from smoking pot, scraping by, in debt, marriage falling apart to discharging himself from treatment and being productive, holding a job, keeping his marriage together and quiting drugs and alcohol.

At 73 years of age, I realize I am somewhat of an expert on time. I have fewer years left than most of my fellow inhabitants on earth and value the minutes and hours that remain with extraordinary affection. Affection for the things I am, have done, doing and will do.

Love informs the consideration of my clients, those that value me and even those that don't. Learning to radically accept each person in front of me is liberating, offering new possibilities of interacting, and, increasing the potential to collaborate on changing their lives.

The energy of being given a gift of money, which is the removal of a chronic and pernicious debt or need, is negative reinforcement in regard to the therapeutic relationship. It is more than negative reinforcement. Because the client can use the money without the need to reimburse it, it is his or her money; and, the money is now a source of power for the client to be in charge of a specific and significant source of worry and stress. The gift could also be a considered a positive reinforcer for self advocacy, that is, the timely execution of responsibilities.

The birth of agriculture came out of a time of plenty:

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-06/csu-oto053118.php

Humanity favors abundance, whether of intellect, brawn or luck, we seek to promote, honor and enhance the quality wherever it is found.

Trust appears to involve two aspects, our psyche and senses. One is internal based and the other external based. Trust involves relying on an image, verbal in humans, of another object perceived by the senses. The relationship involves action and predictable reactions, within the limits that are tolerable for the needs and expectation of that relationship.

A financial intervention is psychological and practical both in its application and in its effects. In the psychological realm it can share aspects of positive and negative reinforcement. For example, when an overdue car inspection sticker is clinically paid for, the dread of parking and getting towed disappear from the client's habitual mindset and anxiety is alleviated temporarily. And, the client has shared his burden in a therapeutic relationship and been rewarded, thus enhancing the reciprocity of the therapist - client bond.

At its most basic level money is just a tool that is created to facilitate exchanges among highly socialized animals—a social tool that acts as an intermediary in transactions. So now we can arrive at our first understanding of money.

Modern civilization has developed a system of using items of particular value that represent the right to claim a certain amount of goods and services. It is, in essence, a way of recording a deferred promise.

State and Station

State is a gift of personality and ability arrived at without practice and as such can be lost or taken away by circumstances and people.

Station however is achieved by arduous work and study and is not easily lost. From Early Islamic Mysticism, Sells (trans.), Paulist Press, 1996, p.102

A financial intervention accomplishes the following:
1. stress reduction
2. build trust in the therapeutic relationship, gaining access to the individual when words are not enough
3. Secures a basic or humane need

The guiding principle of an effective financial intervention is to not associate the gift with client's impulsivity while still maintaining the therapeutic relationship.

"This research shows that individuals who are anxious in interpersonal situations and who have fewer close, personal relationships are better at predicting what a person may like. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180406195508.htm

Anxiety provides the client with creative and self protective curiosity.

In mechanics and physics, Saint Venant's priciple states that two distinctily different but statistically identical loads will affect the outcome in the same way at an infinite distance.