Venting-Beware: NOT a happy post

Ever in one of those moods where it's a good thing nobody is around because you'd drag them kicking and screaming into your cloud of negativity? Yeah, that's where I'm living right now. I spent the last of my shift today 'running' a group of 5 angry adolescent girls. I put 'running' in quotations because I had little to no control over what took place in that room. I had defiance, fighting, complaining, and oodles of negativity, but I had next to no control. Was it a lack of experience? Perhaps. Was it the phase of the moon? Maybe. Was it the fact that I work in a facility that houses adolescents in residential placement who already have a repertoire of bad habits and then comes to live in a shoddy run facility with kids that teach them a whole new set of bad habits to add onto the old one? Yup, that's it.

When the direct care staff consists primarily of underpaid undereducated angry unionized individuals with bad boundaries who allow things like bullying to take place, I don't think the organization is helping the majority of its charges. I do believe that it is likely, in this scenario, that the organization does more harm than good. When a staff member does something like, say, SLEEP when they are supposed to be supervising developmentally delayed adolescents, they should be reprimanded...right? Except, when said emplyee's supervisor is too busy to address his ongoing problems, said employee remains employed and continues to influence already troubled developing minds. Marvelous.

I spoke with my supervisor a couple of weeks ago and told her that I question whether or not I'm helping or making and impact on these kids. Her response was "I think that you do a lot more than this, but, at the very least, you're being a positive adult role model. And as you know, that is something that these kids are seriously lacking."

Gaaa! So, I can keep working for an organization which I have been told is 'resume suicide' and try to make my measly 'positive' impact. Or, I can recognize that I am one damn person and there is only so much I can do. Do I leave the few kids that have a positive attachment to me because I think the organization is a joke, funneling funds out of programs where the money belongs, and I feel may do more harm than good? Or do I try really freaking hard to recognize that impacting a few kids is pretty damn important? For that matter, is my impact all that great? I tend to doubt it.

And frankly, the commute sucks.

Vent over.

This is Negative Nancy, signing off.