Nicolas and another counselor at the BFC, discuss their experiences getting tested at other clinics.
N: You worked in different test sites and you manage different test sites. Given that perspective what do you think is different about the BFC?
C: Uh, I think I tend to be more critical of test sites than most people and I think that I have a critical eye and can usually spot the flaws in the system and for whatever reason I'm kind of drawn toward that, but, the NICE thing about having worked in a number of other places and gone to a number of other places just for services is that I judge us less harshly than I would if I hadn't done that and there's a negative side to that as well, which is that it might be better if I judged us harshly and tried to hold us to an even higher standard uhm, but my method of doing that has gotten better over the years and I beat people up less and do less negatives memoes but, what was the question?
N: Tell me what are some of your criticisms of some of the other test sites that you've gotten services at or been?...
C: I think that there's not, so far as paid places, where staff are paid that a large number of staff learn early on in their work experience that it doesn't matter if they do a good job or a bad job, that they're going to get the same amount of money, the same amount of rewards and they'll climb up the ladder if there is a ladder to climb up just as fast, if they're a shitty counselor, or they're a good counselor, and that there's no accountability for what happens between them and a client in a room so consequently uh uh ,and sometimes in the services that gives them kudos or credits so that they will see a large number of people and how that manifests itself is you're called into a room, you're sometimes engaged but engaged in a way that really tells you you're not being engaged and there are limits to that engagement, and uhh, so the session is real short, doesn't deal with issues, doesn't educate you know, doesn't do a lot of good. Then there are counselors who might be good who don't have the training to know how to guide the session, to kind of stay on track and deal with what we can deal with, which I see as STD and HIV risk reduction, and I kind of bind those two things, I don't make a distinction anymore in my old age. To me they're one and the same, uhm.
And, uh, so there's a lack of training, like a three day training is ludicrous to put people out and the idea is, from a managerial standpoint I think they do a three day training, and then they come in to a shelter work situation where there's additional training and guidance and support which simply doesn't exist at most test sites, so that the system has kind of failed. There is also people with strong biases, religious, otherwise, other kinds of biases that go into counseling and I've encountered those people as well, and both, on both sides, in a supervisorry role, a coworker, and as a client, and they can't make, they can't kind of divorce themselves from their own agenda, and so all that happens, you know, within test sites.
HERE, I think we have a little less of that, it's not non existant but
we have less of it, and I think part of it is is because the emphasis is
on volunteers who coming here feeling like they have a mission, and that
to my knowledge the only force to get people to go faster has been self-imposed
and usually that's discouraged rather than encouraged, so that there is
at least the space that exists and the equipment that exists in a way of
condoms and a variety of other things too do a good job and then it's just
up to us to facilitate it, nurter it support it, uh, and give negative energy
toward some of the other things I talked about before, or when they raise
their head.
Index of test counselor narratives
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