Street Roots • June 19-25, 2015
News
Page 7
Social worker to help library defuse crises
Central Library adds
Position to aid patrons
with mental-health needs
BY E M IL Y GREEN
STAFF WRITER
ultnomah County Library is
preparing to hire its first full-time
social worker to aid library staff in
defusing on-premise mental health crises
and to better serve patrons in need of ,social
services.
Multnomah County commissioners acting
as the Library District Board approved an
$85,000 allocation of library district funding
Thursday to pay for the one-year, pilot-
project contract.
The crisis worker, who will most likely hold
a master’s degree in social work, will be based
out of Central Library in downtown Portland,
where district officials say the need is
greatest
The budget proposal came after a string of
incidents where library staff called outside
agencies for help with patrons experiencing
“severe crises,” library spokesperson Shawn
Cunningham said.
*
“When you’re faced with a suicidal patron,
someone who has literally told you that they
have a plan,” Central Library Director Dave
Ratliff says, “I can’t resolve that. I don’t
really know what to do other than call
(Cascadia) Project Respond and connect
them with the right people. There’s a sense
of helplessness and stress and anxiety and
‘How am I going to get this human being
taken care of fast enough because I don’t
have somebody on site?’ That’s scary.”
The crisis worker will work with the safety
and security manager, another new position,
filled late last year, to find ways for the
library to cope with what it says are
increasingly complex security issues.
“For us, it’s the behaviors that are
difficult,” says Vailey Oehlke, Multnomah
County director of libraries. “We have people
who come in here drunk, who come in here
under the influence of this or that or the
■
PH O TO fiY JOE GLODE
Patrons line up to enter Multnomah County's Central Library.
other thing. That can create a pretty
disruptive environment and a feeling of a
lack of safety for others.”
She and Ratliff say they’ve seen an
increase in library patrons experiencing
mental health issues, although their
perceptions are purely anecdotal.
Two years ago, a survey conducted with
the Department of County Human Services
staff training.
San Francisco Public Library hired its first
social worker in 2009 and has served as a
model for other urban libraries following
suit. Today it has a full-time social worker,
community awareness and treatment service
providers, and health and safety associates —
paid positions filled by people who have
completed recovery and now walk the halls
found that of 834 respondents at the Central
ofTKe'tibrary, offering peer-to-peer
Library, 18 percent were homeless.
The survey also found there were nearly
as many housed respondents as there were
homeless seeking mental health, domestic
violence and housing services.
“A lot of times, people equate
homelessness with bad behavior, and that’s
just not true,” says Oehlke. “We have lots of
folks who use our library who I’m sure are
homeless, but we don’t know it, and they
behave just as well as anybody else.”
Out of the survey came a list of
recommendations urging Multnomah County
to follow in the footsteps of several other
urban libraries and incorporate mental
health and social service information into
information about food, shelter and recovery
programs to other patrons.
Barbara Stripling is the immediate past
president of American Library Association
and current senior assistant dean and
assistant professor at top library school
Syracuse University. She says that libraries
in the U.S. “have a continuing emphasis on
serving underserved populations” and that
making sure librarians are trained in
connecting people with resources is an
important part of accredited library science
curriculums.
Increasingly, she says, libraries are
stepping up social services and access to
mental health counselors, as well as
providing a safe space for people to gather
during emergencies or unrest in their
communities. Libraries served this function
in New York after Superstorm Sandy and in
Baltimore during riots earlier this year, she
says.
The majority of persons-in-charge at
Multnomah County Library have undergone
eight-hour mental-health training from the
county, but the expertise the library needs
isn’t something that can be taught in one
day. ’
“I have staff who say, ‘I didn’t go to school
to learn how to be a social worker; I went to
school to be a librarian,’” says Oehlke, “but
if you choose to work in an urban
environment like this, you can expect it’s an
environment that’s going to come with those
sorts of situations.”
Since June 2014, the library has received
15 complaints and three Yelp reviews from
patrons taking issue with the homeless
presence at the downtown branch. Oehlke
and Ratliff say the authors of such
complaints often make inaccurate
assumptions about their fellow library
patrons. Because the library can be a
“microcosm of humanity in the community,”
Oehlke says, it’s going to reflect every
aspect of Portland’s population.
“We are the last truly democratic
institution in our society,” Oehlke says.
“Everybody gets to use (the library), no
matter where they come from and who they
are. Every now and then, some folks might
find it a little uncomfortable, but I really
believe, in this community, the vast majority
of people really get that.”
She says that for people who get kicked
out of the mall for the way they look or for
loitering or for people who can’t go to
Starbucks because they can’t afford a coffee,
the library is always a place where they are
welcome and can expect to be treated with
dignity.
“Homelessness is not the issue,” Oehlke
says. “The challenge for us in terms of
maintaining a good space is more related to
folks who are presenting mental health and
addiction issues.”
Better
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dental health care for over 230,000 children,
of
becoming
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fam ilies and individuals on the Oregon Health
Plan in th e Portland Tri-County area.
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