MHMR, for the first time since the February 17 coup d'etat, allowed Paradise Center personnel back in to their former building to recover what belonged to them.
What remained filled up the moving truck and 6 pickup loads.
It took 5 hours to move all the material. All was recovered except for $200 worth of cinder blocks that Paradise Center was going to use to build container gardens. MHMR says it will pay for the missing bricks.
It cost Paradise Center $540 to pay the movers, plus $350 for moving and storing the POD. No word yet whether MHMR will pay this expense, which was caused by MHMR.
It was a long tiring day for the Paradise Center people. A tiring day that had the Paradise Center people feeling excited and empowered to once again be back in control.
By the end of the day the Paradise Center sent out an email, a screencap of which is above.
The email said....
To the Friends of Paradise Center, Inc.
Knowing who your friends are is important ...especially when your organization is going through changes.
Our members, Board of Directors, and staff are excited about the future of Paradise Center.
If you are a friend of Paradise Center, Inc., please respond to this email.
We want you to know about the latest updates as well as information on how to access the Paradise Center web page.
Your response to this email indicates your wish to receive further updates about our organization. Your lack of response indicates otherwise.
We look forward to hearing from our many friends soon!
Paradise Center, Inc.
525 S. Henderson Street
Fort Worth, Texas 76104
16 comments:
I'm not on the email list but I want to know how to access their website.
Anonmymous, I guess you'll have to wait and see like the rest of us because it seems like the organization is trying to determine who its real friends are after almost two months of surviving in the trenches so to speak. Understandable. But based on their records this organization is pretty open and transaparent to those it considers its real friends.
I bet that damn smiling Tony is trying his damn best to sabotage this resilient organization's future. Smile, three dollar bill.
Many individuals, families,organizations and entities knew about this attempted robbery and exploitation but have chosen to remain silent and look the other way as a tiny consumer-run organization is being bullied by ruthless government bureaucrats. All because of conflicted financial, political, and personal interests.
Even people of faith and advocacy groups well known for supporting the mission of Paradise Center had shown no moral clarity and backbone like this blogger. He and the band of tyranny resistors have put people like our Broadway Baptist family and nami-tc members to shame for choosing to take at face value the manipulative words of Jim McDermott and his crooked gangsters.
The least we can do now is donate some money to help Paradise Center Inc. to get justice in the court of law. As you had pointed out, even landlords have to give notice and valid reasons in order to support breaking a contractually binding agreement. MHMR-TC weighed cost-benefit of steamrolling over this disadvantaged group because the chances of any substantive resistance was very miniscule.
These MHMR-TC bullycrats were dead wrong. And so were many good decent people who came under the spell and influence of this evil in our midst.
Paradise Center is not a real nonprofit. There's no Board of Directors like real nonprofit organizations. It's just TeresaDavis and her sloppy looking husband Steve leading the small band of malcontented consumers. If Paradise Center had a real Board of Directors, the officers of the Board would spoken up publicly and taken appropriate action. But instead it's been just Steve calling the county commissioners and writing elected officials like Wendy Davis and Lon Burnam.
Regretful Family and Baptists said...
Cons take a stand for what we feel is RIGHT! Not everyone at the Paradise Center agreed with how they did things. Old Peers, were cranky at times, they kicked out "nice guy" Kevin" from off the board and being a peer.
When Teresa Davis took a group to Hot Springs Arkansas her and Teresa Gable had a argument so she told Teresa Gable she "could not go in to Hot Springs with the group and she would have to wait in the house where they were staying." This was cruel on Teresa Davis part, because Teresa Gable had paid for the trip with her own money and didn't deserve such harsh treatment.
There has been other times that different peer leaders or Teresa Davis has over reacted to things !!
Let's discuss Teresa Davis two degrees !! For having degrees for a Baptist School you sure don't take time to discuss God with your clients, or tell them that Jesus came, died on the cross, and rose again so that "all may have Eternal Life". What about soul winning. Is this not important for Baptist? or even Methodists?
Anonymous, let's discuss professional behavior by individuals in a secular setting such as Paradise Center or MHMR-TC. Regardless of Ms. Davis' matriculation at a Baptist school or her personal religious persuasion, it is inappropriate in those settings to discuss Jesus or "soul winning." If you are complaining that she doesn't do that, well, she's not supposed to do that.
If you can "win souls" by living your convictions and modeling desirable behavior without such rhetoric in the professional setting, more power to you.
I certainly hope that when you are typing up those hundreds of documents for your bosses at MHMR-TC that, 1) someone proofs you for typos, grammar and bombast, and 2) makes sure Bible verses are not being snuck in like fortunes in a cookie.
CatsPaw..... I was fortunate that I worked for a christian organization and was able to lead souls to Jesus Christ. Also, I did music ministry at Chapel Daily, taught classes, and on occasion was asked to Preach.
I was in better health when I was typing pysch socials, handling ER admissions to the drug/treatment program. I worked both inpatient and outpatient programs. I had a typing speed of 100 words per minute.
Currently, with arthritis, tremors, and having had a light stroke, it has definitely "slowed me down!".
I have had different times that clients have talked to me outside of MHMRTC and I could freely talk to them about Jesus, take their prayer needs, etc.
Well, It's exciting to see this Easter Season that all is well with Paradise Center and the Drop In Center(AKA Community Center).
May both the Pros and the Cons know that Jesus died on the Cross, Rose again on the Third Day, so that All may Have Eternal Life ! Smile!
CatsPaw you need to keep in mind that Teresa Davis is saying she has never been MHMRTC. So according to that she was free to talk about Jesus as much as she wanted.
Let the Pro's make up their professional minds.
Cons thought she was with MHMRTC since they paid her paycheck and gave her in kind grants.
Teresa Davis has been stating all along that Paradise Center was not MHMR. That's were all the problems started. She refused to go to the meeting with CEO, Jim McDermott and his MHMR Attorney.
Boy, we're with you CatsPaw. We're not sure if these MHMR-TC people are just joking around or are severely screwed up ethically, professionally, and mentally.
The religious comments are so way out there that we're inclined to chalk it up as a fixed religious delusion. And what the heck are "psych social" documents?
It is becoming clearer and clearer that the mhmr agency is sorely lacking in professional competence, ethical standards, and just plain good mental health and realistic worldview.
This scandal may prove to be the defining point for the McDermott era. An era that history could very likely sum up as the dumbing down of the workforce and the political machinations by the competence-challenged leadership to make up lack of quality and excellence. While such dilution of quality is often associated with government bureaucracies, it is not an inevitability.
There were high hopes that the McDermott regime would be one that operates in clear contrast to the corrupt Kilpatrick regime that preceded it. Such hope was apparently misplaced.
Twenty two plus years in power is one red flag. Another is the handpicked Trustees who always go along with the CEO and his team want. Contrast this with various Boards in Dallas and other counties, including the rare FWISD BOARD OF TRUSTEES, who do not simply rubberstamp everything the highly paid bureaucrats want.
The other symptom of this agency's deeply rooted problems is the banishment of smart and dedicated male management level staff and the promotion of female staff to executive positions mainly because they are submissive to the CEOs wishes. Remarkably, most executive and even management personnel are the products of attrition and internal promotions from a very limited talent pool. The corporate culture of this regime does not value a merit based system and a search for the best available talent possible.
Case in point is Ms. Teresa Davis, who was actually recruited !way from Trinity Springs Pavilion. She was hired because her resume and record were clearly superior to the ones of MHMR-TC managers who had applied for the position a decade ago. The fruits of her labor speak for themselves. Moreover her high personal and professional ethical standards have provided the clear contrast between the mediocre MHMR way with the work toward excellence that characterize similar government agencies.
This culture of mediocrity is how and why MHMR-TC is mired in this ugly scandal.
that Lynne must be getting desperate, or is going thru one of her cycles where she's mean to everybody. shes making up things about specific people again like when she and her new bosses made fun of a very sick woman laying in the hospital. i guess she still don't have God in her life. it's so really sad to watch mhmr leaders do this to her and her family because they must be so ashamed of 2hat she help mhmr do to good and decent people. Paradise Center always has a Board, for your information whoever made that ignorance comment. and Teresa shows her faith in God by the way she acts and treat people, even mean ones like and her mhmr lords.
I am just so curious about the very religious mhmr employee/s who appear to violate all kinds of ethical and professional standards by prosletyzing during work and WITH clients.
Mainly, what is your theological view ragarding serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia, with symptoms like hallucinations, delusions, and even violence in some cases? Is it demon possession? have you done any exorcisims? Is what your doing an accepted part of the MHMR-TC treatment and service regimen? Does Jim McDermott and other higher level employees practice or promote this (assuming you're not one of them)?
And how do you reconcile the hateful personal assaults on many of God's children by you and your MHMR-TC colleagues at all levels?
Is it part of your paid job help the leadership with these character assasination attempts?
Do you find it extremely ironic that you and your MHMR-TC friends attack Ms. Davis for not "preaching" her faith, yet you seem to participate and approve wholeheartedly, even gleefully, her "crucifixion" (JUST AN EXPRESSION and appropriate METAPHOR)for standing up for the truth and defending "the least among you" against a local Pontius Pilate and his worldly collaborators??
I'm sure many other thoughtful, and even faith-ful, readers want to hear your explanation.
This MHMR agency continues to astound me in how it operates and what it values, most of them contrary to those of the community.
i feel sorry for this lynn person because she seems to be falling apart mentally. i was on that trip and shes trying to make something sound really bad, she knows that what shes saying are mostly lies. but if she doesnt reelize shes lying then her mental problems are getting much much worse than ever.
kevin was f**** up by jim mcdermott in 2008 after discussing plans for paradise to expand due to being too crowded with so many members. it didnt help that his own inlaws made him think he could go get a fulltime paying job. that's the true reason why kevin left on his own and then was kinda embarased about coming back to join the paradise leaders. jim mcdermott and mhmr and his inlaws f*** him up. looks like their doing it again now after he just start to recover from their explotation.
that dude and them people use kevin and other consumers all the time to make themself look good. they mostly care about theyself. lynne fits in good with these users and abusrs. but theyr using and abusing her to.
Ah ha, now it makes sense. Teresa Davis was mistreated by Jim McDermott because she was NOT ONE OF HIS HANDPICKED FEMALE LEADERS LIKE THE REST. I now remember that she was one of the few management level people who was recruited from outside of the MHMR-TC talent pool (a diminishing one when I worked there between 95-04). A couple other outsiders in the executive group quickly left when they realized the toxic culture under Jim McDermott. In fact, the two men execs I'm thinking of may have been involved in the recruiting of Theresa from the more professional and competitive JPS system in early 2000's. I guess after these men left the insecure CEO replaced them with the less competent McDermott women, whose deficient qualities likely produced this messy scandal and exposure of corruption and incompetence.
The comments by the mhmr people are just beyond the pale and reflects the professional and moral bankruptcies of the agency after years under the rule of an insecure tyrant.
Poor Jimmy McDermott. I bet he wishes that Teresa Davis and the Paradise group was still under his control during this tough budget fight for funding in the Legislature. See, political mastermind Jimmy would have the FW Star-Telegram send a reporter and photographer to write a wrenching story about how these people would end up on the street if the lawmakers don't give MHMR-TC the tens of millions it wanted.
The guy and his gang did this several times over the years...even though they knew that the $100K+/year grant to Paradise is truly a tiny drop in the big $100M+ MHMR budget bucket.
That Teresa Davis worked like crazy to help raise other funds to operate that busy and well loved community center and its many opportunities. Amazing how Paradise only mattered to Jimmy and the gang when they serve a political purpose. Ain't that sort of the definition of neglect and exploitation?
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