Comment by simpaticoder

This is an institutional reflection of the individual tendency to talk about problems rather than solving them. Or, an important variant, where the urge to help those in need is expressed as directing them to "appropriate resources", which are also services that direct those seeking help to other appropriate resources, ad infinitum. The net result is a whole army of people who's expressed goal is to help people but who's effect is to send needy people into a loop of endless communication. We'd all be better off if they all quit and helped out at a soup kitchen, volunteered to visit with house-bound elderly, or something similarly physical and real. (This is in part driven by an individual need to "scale". We praise this desire to "change the world", but we pay no heed to the cost when ONLY world-changing action is praised.)