Week 13 was an adventure to be had. About once a week, Sophia and I meet with kids while they're detained in the detention center. They talk about the bad food, the point system, the cool and not so cool staff, but mostly how much they want to leave the detention center. While Erika was visiting the site, Sophia had arranged for a tour in order to put some things into perspective. We had a heck of a time booting-up before the tour because we had to wear these goofy belts with a tracking device and a panic button. When all was said and done, my supervisor Sophia, her supervisor Judy, Erika, and I had the unique pleasure of seeing behind the scenes of the Juvenile detention center. Our tour guide showed us how the juvenile delinquents are divided up by careful consideration of maturity level, status offense, as well as age. The atmosphere was very jail-like with loud buzzing doors and consistent walky-talky commotion to boot. We got to see inside of a tri-level dormitory where about 15 kids might live. Attached to the sleeping quarters was a counselor's office. The place was being rennovated, and the only person present was a janitor. I thought the architects did a very nice job constructing areas for almost full visibility of the inmates. Throughout the halls we passed inmates with the craziest hair being escourted to and from "special visits" from public defenders and other staff.
Anyway, Wednesday was the highlight of my week. That afternoon I got some practice with the process recording. I don't know if I will use that particular recording for the assignment, but it was really cool. I met with a kiddo who ran away from the last placement we asked the judge to send him to. He's been locked-up for about a year. We sat with him and let him choose from a series of words folded up in small slivers of paper. He had a lot of fun with this. Sophia took words like "family", "hope", "love", "drugs", "fun", and put them all on small sheets of paper. For the recording, the client and I took turns using the words in sentences that were meaningful to our lives. The client seemed to really benefit from this interaction. He is currently on spring break inside the detention center (I know, right?!) so he was truly bored. He's a talker, too. He actually cried at the very beginning. The word family reminded him of why he was detained the first time. He had been charged with child molestation for having sexual interaction with someone in his family. "Sad case"
Integration question:
Values & Ethics/micro or macro: Describe an ethical issue, concern or dilemma you experienced in the field. How was it resolved? I was became concerned about a particular client who was committed to the Dawn Project in order to address her delinquency issues. I attended some of the latter meetings for the client's (female youth) case, and her assigned counselor seemed very distant to the client in the first meeting. The group members in attendance at the meeting (including the counselor's supervisor) discovered that she had been through several counselors. Further information revealed that the counselor recently visited the home of the client, didn't get much of a response from the client and left early because the youth wasn't opening up. An advocate at the meeting confronted the counselor about not having enough patience with the youth. The counselor came back to subsequent meetings with an improved relationship because she realized how bad it looked to meet with the client less than she's supposed to. She also admitted to calling instead of visiting 3 times a week. They resolved to meet at least once, maybe twice, with the youth alone, and meet at least one time with some other family present.
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