Care Without Coercion: Care/Crisis Coordination

(Donations by Paypal are welcome at Paypal.me/xcriteria  to avoid GoFundme's payment delay; I will add them here as offline donations.)

My name is Brendan.  I'm an advocate for people whose needs are not met by mainstream paradigms and professions, including mental health, education, and social services.

I'm fortunate to have found talented collaborators who are among the most impacted by the gaps in these systems and the harm of coercion.  We are adapting our approach to Transformative Mutual Aid Practices into a larger effort and call to action, Care Without Coercion, with the support of the Institute for the Development of the Human Arts.

Care Without Coercion is an emergent network of determined and experienced crisis  care coordinators who are building a movement for getting people’s needs met in advance, including by organizing safe and sustainable housing and needed assistance for our members.

Our expertise comes from the experience of living through crisis ourselves, both personally and though supporting others, in coordination with other forms of expertise like from trauma-informed clinicians and researchers. 

Right now (March 11, 2020), like every day, we are coordinating responses for network members in  immediate crisis. We need funds for:

 * safe and accessible housing (temporary hotel accommodation and longer-term housing)

 * survivor-directed communication assistance including coordination, advocacy, mediation, and transcription

 * caregiving and companionship offered outside of coercive institutions

 * disability aids including laptops, phones and mobile phone data & monthly bills

 * travel expenses and stipends for survivor-requested crisis response visits

 * CBD oil and other herbs for pain relief for people experiencing excruciating pain 

 * needs assessment to identify and coordinate solutions for our members, others our members encounter through online support groups, and others who have nowhere to turn

 * outreach about our work and the situations and issues we're working on

Our current goal is $2000 per week, as we work to transform the situations of three of our founding members who also coordinate assistance for others.  (We are working on a format for sharing specific needs and providing updates on how money is used.  One current effort is a crisis situation in NYC where a member with physical disability and chronic pain is facing imminent loss of housing and we are coordinating to avoid coercive institutionalization.)

As we work to keep our community members alive without coercion, we are modeling an approach to care and crisis response that has the potential to help many more people in the world.  We are working to adapt our learning and expertise-from-experience into accessible resources, including a series of online trainings.


A bird’s eye view / the bigger picture / social analysis / why does this matter?

Society is facing an enormous crisis of care. The public social safety nets, and informal support between family and friends and mutual aid efforts, are expected to provide assistance to those grappling with illness, disability, and crisis situations, but have significant gaps.

A lack of access to basic human care and resources deteriorates physical and mental health and contributes to trauma. While trying to access services and get basic needs met, many are inadvertently dragged into coercive situations that further oppress and harm.

At the hands of our over-capacity and one-size-fits-all systems, and despite the efforts of loved ones and communities, millions of people face unbearable and unsustainable circumstances.  In response, there are a growing number of emergent solutions, often developed by people with personal experience of these gaps themselves.

People working in publicly-funded programs are often over-capacity with their work, and lack the training and experience to assist with the range of human diversity and more complex circumstances. People offering informal support to each other often become overwhelmed as well.  This leaves vulnerable people to fall through the cracks.


A movement is growing 

Care Without Coercion’s work is one of a growing number of grassroots efforts to transform situations and lives by coordinating assistance and resources for people not finding the help they need in other ways.  Such grassroots projects are saving lives every day, and yet huge gaps remain.

Our work builds on the principles, values, and vision of so many people, efforts, and texts; here are a few:

 * Institute for the Development of the Human Arts  (IDHA), the sponsor of our first crowdfunding effort

 * The Disability Justice  movement, and Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice 

 * Humanistic approaches to mental health like Open Dialogue , the Hearing Voices movement , Generative Somatics   Alternatives to Suicide, and others.

 * Intuitive Public Radio

 * (Adding more soon!)

We are all practicing and evolving models of care and crisis coordination that sustains the lives of people living in crisis (while helping others as possible) in transformative ways.  We are seeking to expand the reach of these models to help many more people, but we face resource constraints that get in the way. That’s where you can help.

Dozens of members of our broader community are surviving debilitating, complicated, and life-threatening realities, while also supporting others with empathy, insight, and expertise-from-experience.  These stories and situations are often so complicated and beyond the realm of common experience and mainstream expertise, that our allies likely wouldn’t still be here without the help of each other and their own experience solving problems many people never encounter.


Our opportunity to change the paradigm

Like many others, we are practicing an alternative paradigm that fills the gaps of a broken system and society in crisis that causes so many people to suffer. As we move through life, seeking to meet our basic needs (from safe and accessible housing, to medication to treat illness and pain, to safe and quality food), a great deal of care and support occurs informally, within our communities, families, and between friends. We seek to leverage this human predisposition for community and support, creating a highly-motivated care network that stands to dramatically improve - and even save - lives.

We are guided by the notion of “transformative mental health,” encompassing the numerous alternative models of care that are humanistic, person-centered, listening-based, trauma-informed, disability-informed, and context-aware.


How you can help

A donation of any size will help support the basic human needs and living expenses (housing, food) of several chronically disabled individuals who have been severely harmed and traumatized by either a complete lack of care, or rigid, coercive services. We go beyond the "charity model" by prioritizing fellow humanitarians in distress.

Immediate emergency funds make it possible for people facing catastrophic circumstances to identify the long-term support they need and maximize their capacity to help others. 

Further, as we work to keep our community members alive, we are modeling an approach to care and crisis response that has the potential to help many more people in the world. These efforts have the potential to scale widely, and we are working to adapt what we learn through our network into accessible resources as well as a series of online trainings in collaboration with IDHA.

Sharing this Gofundme and contacting us to help in other ways also makes a difference.

Thank you for reading, caring, and sharing. Together, we can help change the world.