Iâm sorry I didnât handle this better in the first place. My original comments are here, but to reiterate some of the mistakes I think I made in handling the concerns about Owen:
I wish I had asked the various women for permission to get a second opinion from a colleague or to hand the case over to a colleague.
In the case where Owen told me he believed heâd made someone uncomfortable, I wish I had reached out to the woman to get her side of the story (if she was willing to share that). This would have given me a clearer picture of some of his actions that I didnât know about until after the investigation.
I wish I had been clearer to Owen about specific changes he should make.
I wish I had flagged my concerns earlier and more clearly to people at CEA and EV. Two of the people I told about some of my concerns were on the boards of EV US or EV UK (then called CEA US and CEA UK), but I didnât properly think through Owenâs role on the board or flag that to them.
Some things that are different now, related to the changes that Chana describes:
The community health team has spent months going through lessons learned both from this situation and from other cases weâve handled. Based on reflecting independently and together, and now with the input from the HSF investigation, we drew up a list of practices to change and additional steps to add.
Each month the casework team goes through cases weâre handling, and checks whether weâre implementing the practices we agreed on.
To me, the most important change is getting more advice and support from other caseworkers when handling difficult cases, especially if the case involves someone with influence or power in EA. I think this helps correct for an earlier pattern where there was too much deferral to individual judgment. We had started this change before 2023, and now I feel itâs much better-established. For example, when working on a recent difficult case, two of us went over the information and wrote up our questions and proposals independently, then discussed together and came to a joint set of proposed actions. This takes more time, but I think itâs a more robust process.
Over time our team has grown, and itâs more viable than it once was to hand off cases when one of us has some entanglement or conflict of interest.
As Chana describes, weâre developing a process for getting independent opinions when a concern relates to EV leadership or someone else who has power over the community health team.
Those all seem like good changes, but they also feel like what Nate Soares described as âI wish I had bet on 23â errors. What could have been done to help the team notice things needed to be handled differently, before such a costly failure?
As we got more caseworkers, practices like getting input /â sanity-checking from other caseworkers and managers on important cases have been helpful in a variety of situations.
Iâm sorry I didnât handle this better in the first place. My original comments are here, but to reiterate some of the mistakes I think I made in handling the concerns about Owen:
I wish I had asked the various women for permission to get a second opinion from a colleague or to hand the case over to a colleague.
In the case where Owen told me he believed heâd made someone uncomfortable, I wish I had reached out to the woman to get her side of the story (if she was willing to share that). This would have given me a clearer picture of some of his actions that I didnât know about until after the investigation.
I wish I had been clearer to Owen about specific changes he should make.
I wish I had flagged my concerns earlier and more clearly to people at CEA and EV. Two of the people I told about some of my concerns were on the boards of EV US or EV UK (then called CEA US and CEA UK), but I didnât properly think through Owenâs role on the board or flag that to them.
Some things that are different now, related to the changes that Chana describes:
The community health team has spent months going through lessons learned both from this situation and from other cases weâve handled. Based on reflecting independently and together, and now with the input from the HSF investigation, we drew up a list of practices to change and additional steps to add.
Each month the casework team goes through cases weâre handling, and checks whether weâre implementing the practices we agreed on.
To me, the most important change is getting more advice and support from other caseworkers when handling difficult cases, especially if the case involves someone with influence or power in EA. I think this helps correct for an earlier pattern where there was too much deferral to individual judgment. We had started this change before 2023, and now I feel itâs much better-established. For example, when working on a recent difficult case, two of us went over the information and wrote up our questions and proposals independently, then discussed together and came to a joint set of proposed actions. This takes more time, but I think itâs a more robust process.
Over time our team has grown, and itâs more viable than it once was to hand off cases when one of us has some entanglement or conflict of interest.
As Chana describes, weâre developing a process for getting independent opinions when a concern relates to EV leadership or someone else who has power over the community health team.
Those all seem like good changes, but they also feel like what Nate Soares described as âI wish I had bet on 23â errors. What could have been done to help the team notice things needed to be handled differently, before such a costly failure?
As we got more caseworkers, practices like getting input /â sanity-checking from other caseworkers and managers on important cases have been helpful in a variety of situations.