They Put You on Hold Instead of Holding You
Updated: 1 day ago
How institutions use paperwork, mental health, and representation to manage preventable harm
By Carla Rodney
They like putting you on hold instead of holding you.
That may be the clearest description of what we now call care. We have built systems that can receive distress, record it, assign it a number and transfer it from one desk to another. The person speaking is assessed, thanked and referred. The harm remains exactly where it was.
Someone says, "This is hurting me." The system asks, "How are you coping?"
A child is being abused. We offer crayons.
Perhaps the crayons help the child draw what she cannot yet say. Perhaps a kind adult sits beside her and listens. Both things may matter. Neither one stops the abuse. If the danger remains and adults with the power to interrupt it choose not to, the crayons become evidence that a response occurred without a rescue.
We do a grown-up version of the same thing. A person says her housing is making her ill, and someone asks about her anxiety. She says an institution is harming her, and the institution offers wellness resources. She says, "I need this to stop," and the system hears, "I need help tolerating it."
This is not an argument against therapy. Therapy can help people understand, endure and sometimes survive what has happened to them. Mental-health care matters. The lie begins when it is offered in place of material change, as though a calmer person were an adequate substitute for a safer world.
Do not piss on my head and tell me it is raining. If the harm can be stopped, helping someone cope with it is not enough. Calling that care adds insult to injury.
The evidence is not hidden. The World Health Organization identifies decent housing, income and structural discrimination among the non-medical forces that shape health. A 2025 Canadian analysis of programs serving Black communities reported that lack of affordable housing, low income, systemic racism, homophobia and gender oppression shaped people's mental-health needs. Statistics Canada found that 46 percent of recently evicted respondents reported fair or poor mental health, compared with 20 percent of the population overall. Twenty-eight percent identified as having a disability, more than twice the overall proportion of 13 percent.
Institutions know that living conditions affect the mind. They publish the research, announce the funding and hold the conferences. Then a person arrives with a living-condition problem and is handed an individual coping strategy.
There is no blue pill for the impotence of a society that allows its most vulnerable people to suffer while holding the possibility of change in its hands. Impotence suggests inability. This is often something else. Systems can create requirements, collect documents, enforce rules and protect their own procedures. Helplessness appears when somebody without power needs those systems to move.
That is why being placed on hold is the perfect metaphor. Hold is an action that looks like attention. It keeps the caller attached while leaving the institution uncommitted. The person waits, repeats herself and tries not to fall apart. The organization records contact and calls the interaction service.
Black women know this arrangement well. We are praised for strength after being denied the conditions that would allow us to rest. Our ability to survive lowers the urgency of helping us. If we remain standing, apparently the injury could not have been that serious.
People talk about supporting Black women, then swipe past a Black woman speaking. The symbolic Black woman is easy to love. She can be a slogan, a panel topic, a research population or a photograph beside a statement about equity. A living Black woman with a demand is more expensive. She may require time, money, risk or the surrender of comfort.
Sometimes representation itself becomes part of the sales pitch. We are expected to feel safe because the professional across from us shares our skin. Representation can matter, especially in systems where Black people have long been ignored or misunderstood. But melanin is not a method. Shared skin does not guarantee shared politics, shared ethics or solidarity. A familiar face can still administer the same old script.
The question is not whether the professional looks like me. The question is whether the help reaches the source of the harm. Does this person understand the conditions shaping my distress? Will she name them? Will she challenge the institution producing them, or will she teach me to breathe more politely inside the smoke?
This is also how profiting prophets prosper while authentic ones go hungry after sharing their meals. We reward people who package compassion into credentials, brands and performances. The person practising material care often absorbs the cost. Society applauds the description of generosity and overlooks the empty plate beside the person who gave something away.
Care cannot be measured by the softness of its language. It must be measured by what changed after the person spoke. Was the danger removed? Was the home made safe? Was the abuse stopped? Did somebody with power accept responsibility for acting?
Ontario's own human-rights guidance recognizes that accommodation is more than a process of receiving information. Those responsible must explore solutions, communicate effectively and implement accommodation in a timely way. Process matters because it should lead somewhere. A file that grows while a person continues to suffer is not proof of care. It is a record of delay.
Support without intervention is not always useless. Sometimes it keeps a person alive long enough to reach safety. But when the institution offering support also has the power to stop the harm, support becomes a substitute for duty. That is when incomplete care becomes deception.
Care is not how gently you ask whether I can survive the harm.
Care is what you do to stop it.
Until that distinction becomes real, stop telling people they are being held. They are still on hold.
Sources and further reading
World Health Organization — Social determinants of health, 2025
Public Health Agency of Canada — An analysis of the Mental Health of Black Canadians Fund, 2025
Statistics Canada — Recently evicted people tend to be younger, have financial difficulties and report having low trust in others, 2024
Ontario Human Rights Commission — Duty to accommodate
Keep reading on Grandma Knows Best
If you came here because systems promised care but delivered delay, there is more on what care can look like when people actually need it.
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