The other day I watched the news, dumbfounded, as video showed a mentally disabled older woman let out of a taxi on Skid Row in Los Angeles.

Fortunately, a worker from one of the rescue missions in the area, in the highest traditions of nonprofit service, saw the woman on a security camera tape. She ran out to the street to help the woman, who was walking, oblivious, through speeding traffic, dressed only in a hospital gown and slippers.

When interviewed, the woman had no idea where she was or how she got there, but remembered being in a hospital. The news report uncovered that the woman had been discharged from a hospital, and apparently put into a cab, whose driver was told to take her to Skid Row.

I worked in the mental health system before getting into consulting, and from what I recall, a taxi ride to Skid Row does not qualify as discharge planning. Even more shocking was the report that this is not an isolated incident. We have all heard of “Greyhound Therapy,” where a local sheriff puts a troublesome mentally ill person on a bus to a sunny state far away, but this “taxi therapy” is even worse.

There is perhaps one positive note in all of this. If huge hospital corporations are putting unstable, incoherent, helpless people on the street in Skid Row, maybe it is because they know that is where the nonprofits that can help them are located. But wouldn’t it be better to contract with the nonprofits for that help, and arrange for an orderly transfer, rather than just dumping people on the street where they can be killed by a speeding car or victimized by others?

My hat is off to all the workers in those rescue missions in Skid Row, and especially to the woman seen running out to save the victim of a large system’s disregard.

I heard a wonderfully useful phrase the other day from Jerry Sternin: “TBU.”

It stands for “True, but Useless.”

For example, when you tell me that your nonprofit suffers from difficulty attracting staff due to the sector’s low salaries, I might answer “TBU!” Your complaint is undoubtedly true, but it is not particularly helpful.

If, on the other hand, you tell me that you have difficulty attracting staff because of a reputation in the community as a terrible place to work—now, that’s a fact we can do something about! We can figure out why you have such a reputation, and what can be done to change it.

It is True And Useful—TAU.