What’s your top de-escalation tips?

At work, being a small friendly-looking white lady goes a long way tbh, as does being a person who builds up lots of good rapport when the situation isn’t escalated yet. Open body language, being really friendly on the day-to-day, being very visibly “not a threat” - clients at work like me. I’ve broken up fights before because two older men didn’t want to fight “in front of Babs”. Nobody wants to feel like an asshole for picking on someone smaller than them, and many people are very willing to apologize after the situation is over.

Also, cigarettes. If someone seems upset in shelter, it can be super helpful to offer a cigarette and ask if they’ll walk with you and tell you what’s up. It works on a bunch of levels - the nicotine might calm them down, they’ll have a chance to vent about everything that’s upsetting them, and you can’t smoke indoors so it’s a good way to get away from whatever or whoever it is they have a problem with, give some space. I don’t even smoke, but my shelter has a community stash for this reason.

But there’s also a strong safety decision involved. If someone is being escalated and transphobic or homophobic, I’m not going to engage. My classic strategies will not work there, so I tag in a coworker. If things have gotten to the point of actual violence, I’m not getting involved any way beyond asking people to leave. I don’t wanna call the cops, my coworkers don’t wanna call the cops, nobody wanna deal with the cops, so just go away please. Accept that you will likely lose your bed space over this, find somewhere else, but cut your losses.

But ultimately, it’s about being aware of the situation. Do I know this person? What are they like? How do they feel about me? Is it safe to ask them what is going on?

Outside of work, if I see someone experiencing houselessness yelling or otherwise acting escalated towards me, I get the fuck out of there. I haven’t had time to get on their good side, I don’t know them or what they like. I’ve been assaulted trying to be “shelter Babs” in the real world and . I’m protecting me.

If it’s working de-escalation at a protest, I need to judge the situation - will me approaching this person make things better or worse? Sometimes I’m the person for the job, sometimes it’s smart to tag in a couple comrades instead.

This is called “lived experience” and when I’m hiring people it is the equivalent of a college degree.

The best way to get a foot in the door at most shelters is to look for on-call work, especially on swing and grave shifts. At least in my city, there are a lot of experienced on-call shelter workers vying for full-time positions, especially day shift. At some agencies, on-call is the defacto entryway into the field. If I’m looking for a full time worker and someone has already worked several successful on-call shifts and is a known and appreciated presence in my shelter, I’m probably hiring them over an external applicant.

Which kinda sucks to be fair. There are a lot of good people who would probably be great at this work but don’t have that kind of freedom to work those weird shifts, or need full-time out the gate and struggle to juggle multiple shelter agencies like many oncalls here do. But in many agencies, the oncalls are the biggest department and it’s just kind of the culture of how we hire people.

As far as resume and cover letter goes, having good customer service skills/history goes a long way. The job is all about interacting with people, and even though it’s usually super casual, management likes to see that you’ve done it professionally. Knowledge of local social services, like you’d get if you ever applied for Medicaid or food stamps, also helps but can be trained. Knowing what 211 is, is very good. If your city has a “street newspaper”, namedrop it in the interview.

But also, “on-call” doesn’t necessarily mean “part time”. I was working 40 hours a week night shift oncall before being hired for my first permanent role. I was just the person who was there, who showed up.

As I mentioned in another reply, there is a real problem with how shelter workers get hired on - most full-time openings, especially on day shift, tend to be filled by people already in the field or even already working part-time at that shelter. On-call work is the easiest way to get in, and in my experience most agencies have enough hours for any on-call worker to get close to 40 hours a week provided they are willing to work multiple shifts and shelters - this is also a good question to ask about in interviews. If I’m interviewing an on-call and they seem super eager to work lots of shifts and wanting full time, that means my job of scheduling and keeping the shelter staffed is going to be way easier than managing a dozen people who each have very little availability.