On the Road with Riverview Outpatient Worker Bobbi Bard (MSEA-SEIU 1989)

On a typical work day, Maine Service Employees Association member Bobbi Bard travels all over Maine checking in on people with some of the most severe, persistent cases of mental illness in the state. Bard is an intensive case manager on Riverview Psychiatric Center’s outpatient team, which works with forensic patients who have been committed to the hospital after being found not criminally responsible for their crimes due to mental defects, but are deemed well enough to live on their own under the close supervision of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services.

“I show up to all of their houses alone, so if by chance their mental health has declined I won’t know until I get there and I have no back up,” explains Bard. “We work with people who have killed other people and have pretty violent pasts. Some of them have set fires to buildings or on the sex offender registry. We see clients from a variety of backgrounds, but the majority of them have had some kind of violence in their pasts and typically that’s what brought them to us.”

The outpatient team includes a psychiatrist, a nurse practitioner, a therapist, five case managers, a nurse and peer support specialists. Case managers like Bard are tasked with making sure the patients are following their court orders and redirecting them if they’re not. Bard said she originally went to school to become a criminal profiler in police investigations but ended up going into mental health after taking a number of psychology courses. She ended up graduating with a dual major of criminology and psychology.

“One of things that’s really great about this job is that I have a really good team that I work with,” said Bard. “I also enjoy helping people become successful in the community again and that looks different for every single person. Some will eventually leave us and others will tend to stay with us until they pass on, but it doesn’t mean that they’re not successful and they’re not doing the best they can while being out in the community.”

One of the challenges of the job is that it’s overseen by an executive department which is vulnerable to changing political winds depending on who is governor. Case workers also often deal with clients with brain injuries who struggle with taking responsibility for their actions. The job can also be occasionally dangerous when dealing with clients who are extremely paranoid with violent tendencies. Bard says she has been assaulted once and another time a client tried to pull her into the apartment.

“I was fortunate enough that my water bottle dropped and the person kind of snapped out of what they were doing and I was able leave,” she recalled. “Of course the person was like, ‘well pick up the water bottle!” And I was like, no, no that’s ok! There will be no picking up of the water bottle.’”

One of her clients was even shot by police while wielding a knife in the Riverview outpatient lobby back in 2015. One of Bard's peers got into a serious accident after a client grabbed the steering wheel, causing the vehicle to crash on the highway. 

“We’re putting our lives on the line every time we go out,” said Bard. “Most of the time there’s not an issue, but we just don’t know when we show up whether there’s going to be an issue or not. The one time I was assaulted, the client was in a group home. If he had been in his own apartment, I would have been the only one there.”

Like many employers, Riverview has been struggling to recruit staff, which prevents it from running at its full capacity. Currently, Bard and her colleagues are working with Rep. Seth Berry (D-Bowdoinham) on two bills that would increase compensation for mental health workers. LD 1792 would provide a wage increase if $3 per hour for all employees of the Riverview Psychiatric Center, including the Outpatient Services team. LD 1915 would provide a $5 per wage-hour stipend for all intensive case managers in the state.

Bard says she is grateful to be part of a union because of the protection it provides given that Maine is an “at-will” state where employees may be terminated for any reason not specifically prohibited by law.

“If we didn’t have a union, all it takes is one person not particularly caring for you and you no longer have a job," she said. "It doesn’t matter how skilled you are,” she said. “It’s very important to have those union protections so that workers don’t get railroaded.”