Winter Nights Manual: Ten Commandments for Providing and Maintaining Healthy Boundaires
- Maintain healthy boundaries when working with our Winter Nights guests. Many have experienced infringements or assaults on their proper boundaries. Often these experiences leave our guests unable to create or understand healthy limits.
- Provide a structured way of living, with a routine and an expected outcome, helps our guests begin to trust the program, themselves and hopefully, in life, once again.
- Listen, converse and validate our guests is the best ways we can assist. Treat each person with respect, impartiality, and confidentiality. Do not try to “fix”.
- Respect our clients and their dignity and encourage them to do as much as possible for themselves.
- Guard against “over-caring.” Our goal is to achieve the mission of the program – warm safe lodging and meals.
- Always remember to ask yourself, “Who is being served by the action I am about to take?”
- Maintain professional boundaries to avoid guests taking advantage of you in order to meet needs that they feel that they have. You must enforce the programs’ guidelines.
- If and when you see patterns of behavior that seems inappropriate or potentially harmful, inform the Site Supervisor or Program Manager. Don’t attempt to manage this yourself.
- Our guests are responsible for the care and supervision of their children and volunteers should ask parents whether they can assist, tutor or spend time with the children.
- Do not have contact with the guests outside the program or after they leave the program. Do not provide personal information to any of the guests. These acts are a violation of appropriate professional behavior.