BARC UPDATE 04/2009

Stephen Williams, Director of Health and Human Services  relayed the following information to me. 
Williams is talking to Winograd about perhaps being involved in a more ongoing fashion.  He said he was thinking about having Winograd on a retainer so that he could have him back in Houston periodically.
He said he was out at BARC recently and saw things he was not pleased with. He is seeing that there are supervision and accountability issues. I agreed because I’m still seeing issues that were supposed to be fixed some time ago. I’m not sure if this is something that Williams will ask Winograd to assist with, or if he will continue to try to solve it with his staff. I was just glad to hear that he is seeing some of the same things I’ve seen. BTW: I asked him what I should do when I saw issues a BARC and he said to report it to the manager on duty right then. If that didn’t fix it, then I should escalate it to the next level. You all can do this as well, if you wish.
Williams visited the San Francisco SPCA (where Winograd was director) and a couple other shelters when they were in CA last week. I asked him what he thought and he said the first thing he noticed was a different attitude with the employees. He said there is a different culture there. That is something he would like to change at BARC.  Last Monday, I had told him that one of the things that I heard from many shelter directors at the No Kill conference in DC was that once a no kill director got to a shelter, there was a always big turnover in staff. Either they left on their own or were fired. That was the one thing that they ALL said.
He said they have been frustrated trying to change the culture and attitudes of current employees, along with trying to hire new people with the right attitudes.

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