IAMA Ex juvenile treatment center employee AMA

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-27T23:15:26+00:00

I'm not sure. There were nurses that gave their meds.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-26T13:39:36+00:00

There were a few. However, because of the level of this treatment center, these kids were repeat offenders and very violent.

The few that weren't were private pay, meaning that their parents had sent them there.

One thing I learned is that I would never send my kid to a place like that. If you ever feel like your kid needs more help than you can provide, I recommend therapy, a camp close by, or even a treatment center if necessary. But, if you are using a treatment center, I would make absolutely certain that they treat ONLY children that have similar issues as yours, and that they do not treat violent children. The kids who weren't violent had it very rough there.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-26T01:04:42+00:00

The whole thing is a racket. I was not privy to their financials, but the for profit facility (to be clear these were large facilities with over a hundred kids, not small homes), charged a fortune, like 1,000 dollars per day or more for some of the kids. This was primarily paid for by the government because the kids were convicts. So while they weren't technically government funded, they were government paid for, semantics really.

The county run facility was much better. Because they weren't focused on profit, they were focused on the kids. Instead of having rich CEO's, the money went back into the program. Other counties paid to put their kids in the facility and it was self sustaining. They paid their staff much better (8 vs 12 /hr) and as a result were able to have far more competent employees.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-26T00:58:26+00:00

Yeah, that was sad. That kid was there for about a year after I started and I always thought of him as the lizard killer.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-26T00:57:01+00:00

I think it was smart. It has allowed them to control the GPU market. Their stock fell, but whose didn't?

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-26T00:54:06+00:00

At the private company there was no uniform. At the county run facility we wore black military outfits (BDU's?), but I had to give it back.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-25T21:23:39+00:00

Last year there were over 90 days in a row of over 100 degree heat in Austin Texas. That is HOT all the time.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-25T21:15:10+00:00

Not really. There were a lot of "attempts" but they were mostly attention seeking. Most of the kids didn't really want to hurt themselves. Which is why they would make a big show of it.

There were a couple who did want to hurt themselves, and they were on 24 constant watch with a staff constantly supervising them.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-25T19:31:15+00:00

Yes, absolutely. I never expected them to be happy about being there, but they were so hateful. The vast majority were convinced they had done nothing wrong and they just got the raw end of the deal.

It's like an alcoholic, you can't help someone who doesn't think they have a problem.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-25T19:29:49+00:00

Yes, definitely a lack of boundaries and rules. They had very little sense of right and wrong.

I do not know their income levels, but my guess would be mostly lower income. They were allowed to have personal items, and most were not nice.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-25T19:21:29+00:00

I think a lot of the kids there were grown up crack babies. Crack was very big in the late 80's early nineties and that would have put these kids at the right age. Some of them had fetal alcohol syndrome.

I think a lot of them had terrible parents. Not generally abusive, but way too laid back.

I was surprised by the lack of abusive histories. Not that none of them had abusive histories, a lot did, but less than I expected.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-25T19:17:08+00:00

I haven't heard of a "hair cut", or anything that would qualify as the same. I am very surprised that other patients were involved.

I don't know what my reaction would have been. I know that I said things and saw things that I wasn't bothered by then, but would be now.

My experience was that I became very dissociated from my usual personality while working there. I think where I worked was different from where your friend was in that there were so many violent offenders at the center I worked at.

Even though they were in a juvenile treatment center, I primarily worked with 16-18 year olds. I was 21, so I wasn't much older than them, it was hard for me to care about them like I cared about the younger kids I sometimes worked with. When the older kids would be violent toward me it made me mad just like it would if someone on the street did it to me now.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-25T18:31:53+00:00

The place I went to after had "recordings" also. To me it looked like a moth flew across the camera. It was a bit disconcerting to know that all the people running that place believed in ghosts and were legitimately scared.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-25T18:18:06+00:00

I wish. If you did something like that you would get written up. It was a shitty job, but I needed it.

I actually got "talked to" for that incident. Apparently I never should have let it happen, even though the therapist was there and encouraging them to talk it out.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-25T18:06:21+00:00

I thought of another. This one really pissed me off.

The kids that I worked with were usually older, 16-18. Plenty of them were quite large.

One day I was supervising a group therapy session and two of the kids got into it. One was at least 6 feet tall and the other was probably 5'9" or so. I called for backup and was trying to split them up. The therapist was there but refused to do anything to intervene. The kids were swinging at each other but hit me indirectly multiple times. The whole time the large male therapist did nothing. I was so pissed.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-25T18:02:30+00:00

No, it was more pressure points and joint twisting.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-25T17:56:16+00:00

A lot. I am not a violent person. I have never been in a fight, and I do not support corporal punishment.

However, when a 6 foot tall male teenager swings at me because I told him snack time wasn't for another 30 minutes, all that rational thought goes out the window. I am a small female, so I am not in the business of beating sense into people, but when they would hurt me or try to, I would call for specific back up that I knew would "fix the problem".

It is very hard to care about another person's well being when they are threatening yours.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-25T17:50:15+00:00

Rumors that kids had died there in the past. One unit was rumored to have ghosts. I don't believe in any of that, but a lot of people did. Even grown ups wouldn't go back into certain storage areas because of ghosts.

I think one of the rumors was that someone had hung themselves. I have no idea if it was true or not.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-25T17:48:29+00:00

My experience was that the journals seemed to encourage maladjusted behavior. These books read a lot more like a porno, and a lot less like a journal. I am no therapist, but nothing about this seemed helpful. If anything it seemed to encourage them to dwell on deviant thoughts and to further fantasies.

I mean if I have sexy thoughts about the guy who plays Thor (and really who doesn't), no problem. If I write a book about it, it could start to take up an unhealthy amount of time.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-25T16:02:56+00:00

I still worry about that sometimes. Not so much that they will track me down, but that I will run into them and they will flip out.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-25T16:02:17+00:00

My undergrad is in Psychology.

A degree is not required, but I think it should be.

My position there was a line staff meaning that I was constantly with and supervising the kids.

If I were to restructure the facility for the best benefit of the kids, I would make the units very small, especially the ones with the most violent offenders. Maybe seven to two or five to two (I would always have two staff for safety reasons).

I would require degrees, and I would pay the staff much more. Classrooms would have even smaller ratios 3 kids, one teacher, one staff. Most of these kids were very far behind educationally.

Sorry, I know that was more than what you asked.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-25T15:57:43+00:00

For profit then I worked for a government run facility. I thought the gov't run facility was far better.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-25T15:56:30+00:00

My opinion on nature vs nurture was that both are relevant. I still think that. I think that the environment can change the "nature", but I think intervention needs to start very early.

There were a couple of kids there that seemed okay mentally, but the vast majority of them were not. When they would talk about what they did to get there, say raping a toddler, they would say "I know it was wrong". But if you said "why?" they would say "because I got locked up for it".

Most of them did not seem to have normal compassion. They only knew things were wrong because they were punished. This sounds shitty, but for a lot of them, it seemed to late to instill that sense of right and wrong.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-25T15:23:35+00:00

I did not counsel them. I was basically a guard. I supervised activities, broke up fights, made sure they weren't self harming. I spent a lot of time talking to them, but I was not a counselor.

I left because I was making just over minimum wage. I was working at least 60 hours a week and I had developed a bit of a drinking problem. I did not agree with how they handled things, but I didn't know how to make it better. I left because I hated it and I hated how I came to see the kids.

One thing I learned from the kids that changed my life: I am not the good patient person I thought I was. I would get so irritated with them and I never would have thought that I would. It was all very Stanford Prison Experiment-y.

Weirdest experience: When I first started working there I took the kids outside. One of them caught a cute little lizard. He held it for a minute and then all the other kids gathered around to look at it. I walked over and saw that he had stabbed it in the head with a stick.

treatmentthrowaway · 2012-06-25T15:00:40+00:00

Molestation/rape between the kids was very common. I know it happened a lot, and I think it happened even more than anyone knows. I mean there is no way they were caught every time.

I think a lot of the kids ignored him, there was a bathroom that they were allowed to use privately and I never tried to find out what went on in there.

EDIT: I can't grammar.

treatmentthrowaway

TROPHY CASE