Oh how I love my job!

Quote from one of the girls at work at the beginning of the shift, "Who would quit this job?"


Well, let me give you a little hint of one reason that someone might want to quit working at the group home.

Today there was A LOT of drama. Other than having to put 2 girls on consequence for doing stupid little things, and other drama with girls being mad and not wanting to be compliant, I had one girl who decided to throw a real fit. She is on a consequence called "Desert" which means she cannot leave her room. She has nothing in her room except her bed (and they've allowed her some paper and crayons). Also, there is a staff member sitting at her door watching her at all times. Well this afternoon, I had to leave to take a girl to a doctor appointment. While gone, one of my staff called me and said that this girl was "having seizures". I told him that she is just negative attention seeking and to ignore her. Watch her closely to make sure she doesn't do anything harmful but don't talk to her or anything and that I was just finishing up the appointment and would be back soon. Well, as i walked in the house with my girls I noticed not one person in sight. Right then I heard a yell/scream. I had my girls go downstairs where the other staff had taken the rest of the girls and I followed the scream. I found the girl on desert in her room with 2 staff holding her down. I grabbed the hand-cuffs from the office and joined them in the room. I yelled at the girl a little, telling her to calm down and that she wasn’t going anywhere (she had tried to run away). After a few minutes she did calm down and we talked to her saying that if she’d stay calm, the guy would get off of her. She agreed so he got off. He decided to go into the office (right across the hall) to do the incident report while the other female staff and I watched the girl. I then received a phone call from my boss telling me that she was going to be in late and if I would stay a few minutes extra for her. I of course told her briefly what happened and asked for permission to take the girls door off of her room which she agreed. As I got off the phone, I heard a slam and the girl had somehow locked and slammed the door on the other staff at her door. Instantly the guy with me kicked in the door, I ran in there and threw her on the ground. I was on her but she was in a ball so the guy grabbed her legs to pull them out as I got on her and put her into a hold my training had taught me. As I was getting situated, she got in a couple good kicks to my back and head butted me a few times but once I was settled, she couldn’t do anything but scream and swear at me calling me lots of nice things. She did try biting me but failed so the most damage that really shows is some scratches on my arm. After a few minutes we decided to hand-cuff her and I just remained sitting on her but was able to relax a little bit. We sat like that for quite a while with her laying face in the carpet. She did finally calm down and I let her sit by herself, with the hand-cuffs still on of course. After that, I did my incident report and as I went to leave (over an hour late) she said, “bye Cami!”. Hahahahah yes, she would pretend that nothing just happened the past couple hours. She knows I’m coming back tomorrow and wants to be on semi-decent terms with me. Well that was the most exciting aspects of work for me today.

So when I think back to the girl this morning asking why someone would ever quit that job….I want to go up to her, show her my scratched up arm with a little blood and say, “I have no idea why anyone would ever quit this job.” In reality though, it isn’t that bad. I didn’t get too stressed out today. I do enjoy working there. There are up and down days of course but all in all I enjoy working with and trying to help the girls.