It can be difficult to understand how White Bird Clinic's departments are connected and how they interact. This episode explores some of the complexity and depth of the Clinic as a whole. We get to know Al Ullman, WBC's IT Systems Administrator, and his history with the Clinic, facilitating discussions and meetings, and elements of consensus within our unique internal structure.
For those curious about Roberts Rules of Order, which the Clinic loosely has based meeting process out of, you can find it here: Robertsrules.org
To find out more about White Bird Clinic, visit whitebirdclinic.org.
It can be difficult to understand how White Bird Clinic's departments are connected and how they interact. This episode explores some of the complexity and depth of the Clinic as a whole. We get to know Al Ullman, WBC's IT Systems Administrator, and his history with the Clinic, facilitating discussions and meetings, and elements of consensus within our unique internal structure.
For those curious about Roberts Rules of Order, which the Clinic loosely has based meeting process out of, you can find it here: Robertsrules.org
To find out more about White Bird Clinic, visit whitebirdclinic.org.
I never thought I could support - I mean it never occurred to me - that I could support the community in this kind of a way. But once I got here, there was no turning back. It is restorative, to be able to come here and help people, wherever they're at. And once you've been here for long enough, you will see clients who it's like, I'm going to hand them some food and they're going to eat today. And that's, that's what we're going to accomplish to you know, clients who have like, completely changed their lives around, they've got housing, they're happy and practicing good self care and have support systems. And it's amazing. Like it is amazing to watch being able to break this cycle is hard, it's so hard. And a lot of I think community members that mean well like can't grasp it until you are here to like it is a difficult thing to be able to stop being unhoused.
Hana Francis:You are listening to white bird mutual aid. My name is Hana Francis. Together we explore nonprofits and social service organizations in Lane County and partnered ones in Portland and as far as Chicago, we examine the work that is done by these organizations based on the perspectives of workers and volunteers to look at why the services are needed in our communities and how you can get involved. So what is a collective? What is a consensus collective? From the outside very few people know just how big and complicated White Bird Clinic is. The collective has 250 staff members and has done most of this growing in the last five years. Even for people who work within the clinic, it is hard to know just how many departments there are and who's working at what job this episode I speak with the IT systems administrator of White Bird Clinic. Al Ullman in this episode, we get a unique perspective of White Bird Clinic. A look at the inside workings of a 50 year old collective.
Al Ullman:My name is Al Ullman and I use he/him/his pronouns. And I am an IT systems administrator at White Bird Clinic.
Hana Francis:Al was born in Eugene and the hospital just down the street from our interview. His family was a part of Eugene collectives in the 70s but but it still took Al a long time to come around to working at what himself.
Al Ullman:Well, I went to school as an English major, and then got a linguistics master's degree. And figured I'd do something with languages. And I'm never one to have any moss grow under my feet. I've always had like three or four jobs at a time. And so when I graduated, I worked at a computer place Mac Tomic, local place. And then I got a job in publishing for a little while at a local publisher, and didn't like it at all. So stuff that I had, like, gone to school for wasn't really interesting to me. The world was very weird place. And I felt very overwhelmed about all these things that I had no control over and wanted to do something that affected my community. Specifically, I tried to pare down like, Okay, this is in my control, and it's not in my control. And so I left publishing and started looking for positions at the city and other places in town, that were local nonprofits. And there was a position for a medical receptionist, which I had no experience in whatsoever. But I had done this thing where I had followed my friend Darren Chester from job to job. You know, we work together at Mac tonic. He had a coffee shop, and I worked at his coffee shop. So he had come over here working in facilities. And I asked him if he thought I could do that job. He felt like I could I applied and Dez and Dana interviewed me and for some reason, thought I'd be a great fit as a medical receptionist. And so that's where I started. Nice. And when, when was that? That was 2019 September 2019. Some about Dave for years. Timber
Hana Francis:Al has moved from the medical receptionist job and is a bit of a problem solver for White Bird Clinic. For those of you who may have forgotten White Bird Clinic offers many different services in several different programs.
Al Ullman:There are a lot of things that White Bird does. We have a medical clinic, we have a dental clinic, we have a 24 hour crisis hotline, we have Cahoots working with the fire department going out, dressing behavioral health concerns in the community. We have hoods that supports youth in the schools. We have substance abuse behavioral health clinic, we have outreach that goes out to all of the camps. We have our front rooms department that helps people with mail, getting food, getting clothes, getting supplies, we now have a measure 110 department that is working with the measure 110 money to provide a wide range of services and access to more gear and lots of harm reduction supplies.
Hana Francis:And Al also later added that we have a counseling department and a department called Rock Medicine that provides crisis response to substance and mental health related instances at festivals, including Oregon Country Fair, and other community events.
Al Ullman:It's a lot. We have expanded a lot and our our internal processes have to expand with it. And that's being worked on and done. And hopefully it is done in a very White Bird, very consensus, very collective based way.
Hana Francis:What is a community collective way of doing things anyways, our called coming to medical for the first time and arriving in the middle of a somewhat chaotic meeting.
Al Ullman:I had no idea what I was getting into at all. And they were very accommodating. You know, I wanted to put in two weeks at my other place. But I had scheduled flexibility over there. So I was training over here medical while I was working my other job. And they said you have come in on Monday whenever you can. And that's when they have their program meetings. So I walked in right in the middle of a program meeting. So everybody's in this big circle everybody in the medical clinic, and it's a potluck, they did a potluck once a month, so it was a potluck day. And there was an MA Rose who was amazing. Who was like you got to get some food and people are yelling at each other across the room, two doctors are like arguing back and forth. And I was like, I don't want to get in the middle and like, get some food. And so I'm piling up this play, doctors are yelling at each other, they call it process check. And then the doctors just have to talk about their feelings and how they're feeling attacked, and then get back onto a good plane to continue talking about client care. It was, it was like, this is the place for me. I love this.
Hana Francis:Our collective model encompasses some amount of consensus, although exactly how much is difficult to say. And it has fluctuated vastly over the years. And consensus itself is a hard term to define. But Allah has done a bit of research on what it means to our collective in particular.
Al Ullman:Well, consensus can look very different. In a lot of organizations, a lot of places that utilize consensus, it is spelled out in our policies and procedures, in our policies and procedures for white bird consensus is everybody being able to move forward with an idea, everybody gets input on any ideas that are coming through that need to be approved on or just ideas that are out there that people want to discuss about. And, in general, if you have a problem with a proposal or an idea, you would then say, this is a problem. For me, this is the part that I have an issue with if you can name it, and identify it. And this is how it can be adjusted in a way that I could move forward with it. That's the dream. Sometimes people can name it, there's like, there's something about this, that feels weird. And it's like I need another week. And I'm going to figure it out and bring it back with some other ideas. And hopefully, conversation happens over that week. And they're able to get to a place where they can bring it back to whatever meeting it's being proposed, Senator decided and move forward with that, as long as nobody has clear objections. And if they do, they should be able to come up with some reason, some idea in some way to adjust it to move forward, if possible.
Hana Francis:So what is the purpose of working that way?
Al Ullman:I mean, for me, the value is really, in having so many different people from so many different parts of an agency or department be able to weigh in on something. You know, you'll have people who come up with what they feel is a great idea. And then it you know, they bring it and there are lots of people that are like, well, there's this issue, and there's this issue. You know, when I did new bird training, Moose was running it. And I think he is this one example from our history here at white bird as a way to exemplify consensus, which was, excuse me, the idea of having security cameras at 341. I think some of the history was like, some claim was like spray painting a staff members car, something pretty serious, right? Like multiple times, like not a one off. And somebody wanted security cameras, so they could send something right. So that it was clear, and there was evidence. And people were very against different a numerous reasons, right? Like we don't our clients interactions with law enforcement aren't always great frequently. And we don't know that we want to go down that route. And in general, white bird is full of people who don't want to be on camera. You know, there is resistance there and so on It was it was a fun thing to do in our NBT cohort. There's lots of fun conversations. Well, what if we did this or what can we do this because we want to support this person who's getting their car spray painted the time. They had an idea about who it was. It's like if this is the one issue, we don't need to create this overarching change to resolve this one issue. And I think that in the end my cohort, consents to putting up fake cameras. That didn't work as a deterrent. But it was fun to have have that conversation kind of play it out like we were community. We do not have cameras here.
Hana Francis:A big part of consensus at White Bird, historically and somewhat contemporarily, is through a weekly meeting during which all members of White Bird Clinic are invited to attend and discuss decisions that concern the collective. And usually there are about 30 to 40 attendees. Al often facilitates this meeting and I was curious about how the role relates to having a wider scope of the agency and what it takes to be a good facilitator.
Al Ullman:Yeah, so like I said, my first experience with program meetings or meetings at White Bird was at program and medical. And it was always a service position. Certainly not something I had any interest in taking on. But it's one of those things where you see somebody else doing anything like I don't like the way this is being done. And they would ask a white bird, and all of our, and all of our programs, as far as I know, and definitely a community, which is our decision making like body who wants to facilitate, so always an option for anyone to be able to do it, and medical. I saw some things that I was like, I don't think it should be done like this. And there's like some mild, I think power and being the facilitator, like you can't, like take over the meeting. And that's some of what I saw that I was like, I think this should be more open. And they follow Robert's Rules of orders a little bit
Hana Francis:for those who may not be familiar, Robert's Rules of Order is a manual about parliamentary procedure, originally published in 1871, by Henry and Sarah, Robert. The term also references a series of variations which people have written based upon these rules of order. Robert's Rules of Order is the most widely used manual about parliamentary procedure in the US. A link to an online version can be accessed at Robert's Rules dot work.
Al Ullman:Every every one who uses Robert's Rules, like just takes the 101 kind of gets rid of the rest. And that's fine. It's just about creating some kind of order or structure around a meeting. It's pretty lacks here at whiteboard, which I like. But I started doing it because I felt a there was like, always this long silence, right of like, I don't want to do that. And that bothered me, I was like, we're a collective, everybody needs to be pitching in. So I'm gonna take my turn at it. And then it was a thing I researched. And so I knew something about it. And my communication skills are pretty good. And people were like, We would like you to do that again, please. And so I kept doing it a bit. And that worked out well at medical and eventually got to the place where nobody would ever sign up for it. I tried creating raffles that you would get put into if you did have a service role, which would be like note taking, facilitating timekeeping, all these little things. If you did it, you could get in the raffle. Never got approved. I brought it up a couple of times, never. It just turned devolved into a different conversation. And I tried pressuring people. You know, I tried just abandoning it altogether. And I was like, Well, I'm not going to do it. So you figure it out. But it never lasted for like now I'm not over it medical. So I think Mac given to an MA over there who would do it for me sometimes, but also was frustrated at the fact that nobody else would do it facilitates over there most of the time with community. I never went to community before COVID It was in the yurt. And I was working at radical so there was no going over there and in doing that. So I didn't know what community was like I read the minutes when they came out. They used to come out the day after. So you could look at all over and be like Well, that's what they talked about yesterday afternoon. Isn't that wild? I always really wanted to go there was always very interested in them when COVID happened went on to teams and it was virtual. And then a lot of people started going to community it's a big difference. Yeah, we 10 1215 people and then it jumped at it Now, pretty wild stuff. And I was always just listened to in the background while I was working. So I still didn't catch a lot. But I got to see what it looked like it was pretty interesting. And then when I moved over to it, I had the freedom to adjust my schedule. So I could focus on that. And naturally started facilitating there along with at Brookings a lot. And Arlo and IRIC tried to come, I think, I reckon Matt maybe tried to come up with like, some way to get more people interested in that kind of service position, it's, again, something I feel like everybody should try to take a turn at, if they're interested. There's a lot of people that are like, I've no interest in doing that, I'd be terrible at that. I trust you to know, like where your limits are. But in the idea that maybe people just felt that they needed support around that, or some kind of guidance, because there's none. Matt And Eric, I think came up with this idea of like, okay, well, we'll get a group. And that group will do all the service positions for that month. And every month, you'll get a new glass for a new group, you plan that out, and then like, you can get together beforehand, like 15 minutes and be like, This is what's on the agenda. I'll facilitate this am I'll take minutes this time. And you can change it up in your group if you want. And you can debrief afterwards, what worked, what didn't. And I was part of a group that went pretty well. I think that there was another group before us, maybe and then our group, and then nobody ever did it again, like it lasted two months, maybe three, but I think it's two. And then there was just no doing it. But we did get a couple of people that were like, Okay, I'll be part of this group. And we're into it. And it was a lot of fun.
Hana Francis:This position of facilitation, obviously, isn't easy. It takes a certain kind of person, a certain kind of interest. And like I mentioned, the ability to attend the meeting. What makes someone interested in doing this kind of facilitation?
Al Ullman:Yeah, I think that communication is a strong suit for me, largely, because of all the linguistics work that I've done. It's really about establishing communication, you know. So I do have a lot of experience there. I've always been, for some reason, naturally gifted when it comes to communication. My, my kindergarten teacher said I would probably either be a teacher or a lawyer. And that is progressed through all of my teachers when I was in grade school. But yeah, so some of that comes it just inherent, and I don't know why. But I'm happy that I have those skills. I have done a lot of work like researching how to better communicate to from my time here, just wanting to know more about how to provide better client care.
Hana Francis:So what what are all the jobs that you've done? Here? You've done a few jobs, right?
Al Ullman:Yeah. So I started out as a medical receptionist, a lot of that involved information and referral to other services. If we couldn't help with something, we wanted to be able to tell you where you could go, and not have it be a like, well, you could try here, and then they'll tell you to try somewhere else, you know, so I would frequently make the calls and be like, what's this process look like? Could my my clients get this help here? Or are you just going to refer them to somebody else? Can we make this process easier? And can I prepare them for what it's going to look like? And that led to taking on a role at medical called SDOH social determinants of health. They also call it health links. And it was a model where their slogan was taking back the waiting room. And they used to actually have a desk in the waiting room. So it's like what people are waiting for to see the doctor you can be like, Well, what else you got going on? And the doctors would refer to SC O H, and I ran a bunch of volunteers there who would come in and help as well. To just help people get access to other resources. So we help people fill out food, SAP applications, that kind of stuff or applications to inpatient treatment, or tell them where they could get free pantry boxes from food filling County, that kind of thing. And as well as like just giving them advice on a better diet. And, oh, you are a diabetic, let's talk about what that means and what should be avoided and that kind of stuff and help provide them with literature for that. And I took it to like a, whatever you need, we can try to help with that I help people get off of Medicaid and other states so they could get on Medicaid and no HP and have those long conversations where you're waiting on hold for 40 minutes to talk to somebody and help sort that out. It's been very, it was very valuable, I really loved that work. And then from there, I just ended up over in it because of my history with computers, as well as my communication skills. The IT team found out that I knew something about computers, which I tried to hide as much as I could. And they really needed somebody who could interact well with our staff, and have the patience to explain how to do complicated or annoying computer stuff. Being part of a collective, I ended up taking a lot of other things on outside of the normal IT systems administrator role I My skills are largely in organizing. So coming up with clear processes is something I do a lot and documenting them. So not everybody's doing something differently, which has been very valuable. And then having a keen eye to see where things are dropping off or not being looked at has been very helpful thing that I've been doing in it. We have tickets that come in every day for a large variety of stuff. And so we each have a ticket day where we take that on. So there's always a fun day where I just get to help people around the entire clinic, which is great, it's something I always wanted to do was be able to support other departments, not just medical, although medical was great, and I love my time there, it's nice to be able to go into all the buildings and see all of the staff and interact with all of them. And support them. I love being in a support role. So great.
Hana Francis:Coming up with processes and spending time with all the different departments is increasingly unique to admin positions. There are a few of us compared to the number of people providing services to clients. And when the clinic was smaller, people had more capacity to spend time with each other and more motivation to go to different departments in person, mostly out of necessity. Because of the humanistic value that this brings to the structure of a human centered service. This is an especially important role to continue at the clinic.
Al Ullman:Definitely what you're talking about, we call siloing. A lot here. And it's I think detrimental to what we're trying to accomplish. And I'd love to get back into a better connection with all of the departments. You can see it in certain places like medical and chrysalis work together with a suboxone program. nest in front rooms have a whole system for their walk ins that connects them very easily. Right there. Crisis used to be in the same building here and could go out and help with any crises that are happening in the front rooms. That's not the case right now. But I think there are talks to do some of them, bring them back in maybe after the remodel, we'll see. That would be great. You know, Kahoot supports all the different departments when crisis are happening, and can drop people off in different locations when they're available. There are lots of times where you'll meet staff though that are like, Oh, I had no idea that nest does that, or the or where front rooms is or all kinds of staff. You know, and I think there are probably a lot of people that are like, I don't know about hoots you know, they do their work in the schools. So not It's not like visible like it is here and 341 but they're doing great work. And so making that more readily available is important,
Hana Francis:and an effort to combat the siloing of our departments. Owl has recently created a comprehensive staff directory to increase accessibility to one another and as a part of a committee that is reworking the new volunteer training, also known as new bird training, in which new staff or volunteers learn about white bird clinics Valley Use programs and services.
Al Ullman:And Notes to the Front is something that's come out again, it's an old thing that's being revived to help a little bit with at least with contact stuff. And I've built out a staff directory that helps direct people like oh, this is you can see how many staff are in each department, who to contact and, and kind of some of the steps that they do as well, to help improve some of that. We did a survey. So I'm part of a subcommittee, that new bird training reenvisioning subcommittee, where we're talking about we're in this space where we can kind of revamp it to make it fit. The current state of affairs here and white burden, we did a big survey with everybody about what their experience was with neighborhood training, what they liked what they didn't like, lots of great, wonderful responses. Some people loved it, some people hated it pretty unanimously. Being in person was instrumental, I think, and a lot of people felt that way, they felt close to people outside of their department in other parts of the agency, that they could then feel comfortable reaching out. And contacting
Hana Francis:these kinds of relationships with coworkers are essential to the well being of whiteboard clinic. With history is rooted in warm handoffs between departments, it's helpful to our process, if staff have an idea of what kind of person they're referring clients to, and what their caseload might be like, and if they have capacity to help. Another of the biggest points of struggle in our clinic is paying people enough. Though, we are hopefully heading in a positive direction with this. Our aim is to provide the best possible care for our clients. And as always, it is important to remember that our staff can become clients, if they're not properly taken care of by the collective,
Al Ullman:Especially with inflation and what's going on in the world, like people are our staff are struggling. And I think a lot of our staff, and it's always been the case for me. And even like people like Kim, though pro Cove, dental, you know, look at this, and I like that can be us, like, give it a couple of months of being unemployed. And I'm out there. Like we're all living like paycheck to paycheck here. And that is the case across most of Social Work, which is sad and depressing. But it also provides a lot of compassion to for our clients. Like it is not hard to put yourself in those shoes. Like it's not hard to imagine. That could be Yeah.
Hana Francis:But it's not all hopeless. We continue to make small victories that prove that we can continue to make better working conditions for our staff.
Al Ullman:Like CAHOOTS, just redid their contract with Springfield, right? They asked for a 12% increase, they got it. It's like, that's where you build in like, this is our projection of what it costs to run this, run this service to run codes in Springfield is what it costs. And it costs that price because we're paying our people a living wage. I think it's possible. It means looking at things a little differently, I think. But wiper has got a strong name. People believe that wiper could do this work. And I think they should pay us to do it.
Hana Francis:All has been working at wiper clinic for about four years. And although he works in it, he has made special provisions to his job so that he can still do some direct client care, because it's so important to him.
Al Ullman:I love to do direct client care and it was one of the things that really made me hesitant to take on it work because I really love talking to our clients beautiful and amazing stories. And I love being able to help people like that's the dream
Hana Francis:when you do that know a little bit.
Al Ullman:So that was the agreement I made with the IT staff that hired me was that I would come on and we would hire as full IT staff and then I would cut back hours. I get paid a lot better and it but but I figured well I could do that most of the time and then still work for $18 an hour doing direct client care, which is what I love much more and really, you know restores and re vitalizes my energy and spirit. So once we got, we got up to a full staff and it I started cutting back hours so that I could do front rooms work, I was always my dream to work in every department plans always been to retire in crisis. Which I would love to do. For me, like the biggest part of it when I first started, that helped me a love, like what I do here was spending time just we'd say this a lot here a whiteboard and meeting people where they're at. And like actually getting to know our clients. It's not like a Oh, you need this thing, fill out this paper. And then there you go. And you're all good. There's a lot of frustration and, and anger about the situation that they're in a lot of times, and very reasonable, right? Like this is a cycle that is hard to get out of. And you really get to learn all of those details. When you sit down and have a conversation with people, you know, we had chairs next to the reception desk, and medical and people would just sit there and we would just talk while I was doing work. And I got to learn a lot about their lives. And then being part of social determinants of health. Like you got to really dig in even more and see more about their history, where they're at what their support systems are like, which we do in all these different departments, even like front rooms. They're not just sitting there handing out sandwiches, and then it's like, off you go. Here's some clothes, see you later. The front room staff knows those stories, knows those people's names. Like it was amazing when I first started training in front rooms, and they knew everybody, everybody that walked through, you know, and there's such a variety there are hundreds of people that come in utilize from rooms, services, and they know them all. It is amazing. And it's not just like I know your name. They know what style of clothes they like, you know, who they hang around with and are friends with who they've got problems with. Like what they're doing like when they have to go see a social worker in two months and who they need to contact even though they are not caseworkers, that is not their load, but they know all that stuff. They're such a vital resource for our clients.
Hana Francis:If you would like to learn more, donate or get involved with white bird clinic, you can go to white bird clinic.org. If you have a particular story that you would like to share about the clinic, or about social services in your community, as a client, volunteer or staff member, please reach out to me at whitebirdmutualaid@gmail.com Thank you so much for listening to White Bird Mutual Aid. I'm Hana Francis.