United We Heal

In the beginning, there were just a few seemingly isolated conversations with workers at a large community behavioral health agency. We were burned out and frustrated with the lack of resources that prevented us from providing the care our clients needed. We were angry about program structure and the symptom management paradigm. It made us sick to see our clients treated like customers. We were fed up with phrases like "trauma informed care" being celebrated in agency literature, but absent in practice. We were demoralized and felt like disposable workers in an exploitative system that was designed to extract every ounce of labor out of new graduates.

Through ongoing discussion, we realized that positive behavioral health outcomes are more than emergency department and jail diversion. They are more than symptom management. Among many other things, positive behavioral health outcomes depend on social and community inclusion, access to safe and stable housing, trauma recovery, physical health and quality nutrition as well as finding purpose that in many instances transcends vocation.

We soon learned that we were not alone. Conversations like these were happening, however quietly, at agencies throughout the Portland Metro Area. It was clear that an industry-wide effort to raise standards in service delivery and working conditions was being imagined and co-created in real time.

As community support grew and new perspectives emerged, we began to recognize the scope, power and potential of our coalition. Our work at the Solidarity Alliance of Social Services now represents efforts of direct service providers from over half a dozen behavioral health and social service agencies, private practice professionals, community organizers, mental health advocates, university professors and community partner organizations.

I have written this little story about how SASS came to be with the hope that you might see some reflection of your own experience in our journey. Please join us in building power so that these conversations, thoughts and ideas do not remain silenced anymore. We are much stronger together and together we can accomplish great things.