Angus King Blasts Elon Musk's 'Fork In The Road' Email To Veteran Crisis Line Employees

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Senator Angus King (I-VT) slammed Elon Musk's email to federal employees, including those at the Department of Veterans Affairs Veterans Crisis Line, during a Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs hearing Wednesday.

Transcript

00:00That's a rare occurrence around here.

00:03But it should be more common.

00:06I want to follow up on the question, Ms. Blaine, about productivity.

00:11Were the people in the call centers under pressure to do so many calls a day or not

00:18have calls be longer than a certain number of minutes or that?

00:22Describe to me the metrics that were being applied.

00:25Sure.

00:26Thank you for that question.

00:27So the metrics that were being applied was the amount of time that you were staying on

00:31a call.

00:32What a lot of people fail to realize is that veterans that are getting help from the responders

00:40at the crisis line, they call back.

00:43For example, even though we're told it's not a clinical role, a lot of us that are licensed,

00:49we will literally deescalate, give them suggestions on homeworks, walk them through deep breathing,

00:57but those things can be easily frowned upon because it takes the call longer to be completed.

01:02I am not willing to leave anyone behind that needs my assistance.

01:08So the idea of production didn't work for me because that human services and human life was more

01:16valuable than the numbers.

01:18Well, I fully understand that.

01:20I'm amazed that there would be such, I mean, the last thing you want to do if you're talking

01:24with someone in crisis is to say, I'm sorry, but our time is up.

01:27I mean, maybe if you're a cable TV, I mean, you know, a cable services call center, that's different.

01:36I'm surprised that anyone would even think of applying that metric.

01:39Well, we would frequently receive direct messages in teams saying, hey, I noticed that you've

01:47been on this call for a long, a long time.

01:49Do you need any help?

01:51Well, what kind of help are you going to help me with if I'm the one deescalating someone?

01:57You can't come in and take over the call.

01:59You don't know what's going on within the call.

02:02So you're literally distracting me from completing the call and paying attention to the veterans.

02:08When did this metric system come into place?

02:10In, I believe it was 2018, when we, so we had the director and then he hired a new person

02:19and that person had come from a background in a call center that was more production guided

02:28versus being able to be human guided.

02:33Now, I noticed that you left in May, so you went through at least several months of the

02:39new administration at the agency.

02:42It's no secret that there are firings, hiring freezes, threats of more firings, reorganization.

02:48Did that affect the operation of the call center in terms of people, morale and dedication,

02:59people wanting to stay or go?

03:01Talk to me about whether the difficulties at the agency level affected the call center.

03:08Thank you so much for that question and bringing the humanism back into it.

03:13It absolutely affected the morale.

03:15One of the things that happens when you're a crisis responder is you can develop vicarious

03:21trauma by listening to the repeated situations that individuals are going through.

03:28However, when you're concerned, if you're going to be able to pay your bills, if you're going

03:33to be able to keep your health care, if you're going to be able to function, that is going

03:39to impact your ability to stay focused.

03:42Now, I have to admit, my peers at the Veterans Crisis Line, as Mr. Cohn said, are rock stars.

03:50They stayed focused.

03:52We all came together in teams and I would say, hey, here's my phone number.

03:57If anybody needs me, text me.

04:00We had to create situations outside of teams to offer support to each other because it

04:07was so overwhelming.

04:09Every week, having to write-

04:10The chaos-

04:12The chaos was overwhelming and it was distracting.

04:16Every week, you're having to write a, what did I do next week or last week?

04:21Letters to send off to an invisible email that-

04:25That was the famous five things you accomplished last week?

04:27Yeah, the fourth in the road.

04:28Yeah.

04:29I sent one of those in myself to Mr. Musk.

04:30I never heard back.

04:31Yeah.

04:32Because you weren't.

04:33Told him what I did in the prior week.

04:34The mailbox at one point got completely full and nobody was answering it.

04:36Let me ask another question and this just, this is not about this subject, but what are the

04:41issues that, are there, there must be a pattern to issues.

04:46Are they financial, are they, you mentioned health care, is there any, can you give us

04:51a summary of what the most likely calls are about?

04:56So most of the calls that we received are usually individuals that have faced levels

05:00of trauma from military sexual trauma, remembrance of their time in combat, individuals that may

05:09have not gone to combat but may have been on a ship and felt like they were in a sleeping

05:14coffin, marital issues.

05:16We became notorious for being marriage counselors, sometimes having to break up arguments over

05:22the phone between spouses.

05:24And so it just varied between that, individuals that were homeless, or individuals that specifically

05:31just felt unseen, unheard, and easily forgotten.

05:35And did you have the capacity to refer them to VA PTSD programs, for example?

05:43I mean, in other words, did your duties go beyond listening?

05:48So the referral process, the first referral process is to the suicide prevention coordinators,

05:54and those individuals are usually housed at the VA medical centers, a social work department

06:00that takes those referrals, and then tries to disseminate them to the appropriate areas.

06:06Directly referrals, we will send individuals that are facing homelessness, we go send them

06:12over to the National Call Center for Homeless Veterans.

06:17When it comes to things like needing appointments, I was a little different from what the SOP said.

06:24If I have a veteran on the phone, and they needed to get through to make an appointment, I'm going

06:29to make the call to get them through to make that appointment.

06:32The SOP says, transferring blindly, let them pick up on that end.

06:37To me, I believe that we needed to be more of a one-stop shop, so that we would not, can

06:44you imagine a 90-year-old veteran calling in, and the call just keeps circling, because

06:53he doesn't know what button to push, I'm not going to send them over blindly.

06:57And those are some of the things, some of the stressors for our elderly veterans, because

07:03everyone was wanting to force them to use a computer, go and navigate a phone system,

07:08they can't.

07:09It's not a part of their generation.

07:12And why would we want to do that?

07:14So, I mean...

07:15One of the most frustrating things in the world is to be on some kind of call like this,

07:18tell your story, and then have somebody say, well, I'll move you over to this other department,

07:22and then you're on hold listening to music again.

07:24Well, your testimony has been very important and impressive.

07:28I hope you can, I'd like to assign some homework.

07:32Could you supply to the committee further thoughts about how this system can be improved?

07:38Because that's the business we're in here, and to the extent you have such, both of you

07:41have firsthand experience.

07:43To the extent you can make suggestions about the standard operating procedure or the productivity

07:48metrics, those kinds of things, that would be very helpful to us.

07:51Absolutely.

07:53Thank you, Mr. Franke, member.

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