My name is Stokie Jaye, and I work in a group home for emotionally disturbed boys.
As I drive into work every day, I pass a battered old road sign that was probably erected when the place was built. To me, the sign means absolutely nothing about traffic; it encapsulates what I experience and what I have come to know as the god-awful truth about these kids.
It says simply, "SLOW: Children at Play."
The organization I work for is a religious-affiliated non-profit which means its run by very well meaning people who have strong ideals and no idea about how to run a business. Consistency is a problem. Balls are dropped. There are communication breakdowns, grudges kept, infighting, secret liaisons, heavy drinking and AWOLS. And this is just the adults I'm talking about.
For the most part, the average group home counselor is a college student or freshly out of college and applied for the job because they have no idea what a group home is and someone told them that it's like summer camp. For those unlucky applicants, war is not hell--their job is.
I have been a counselor in this home for more than a decade and yes, I do wonder if something is wrong with me to have stayed so long and put up with the shit I've been through time and again. But I love my job and love helping my kids. At least to the extent that they can be helped.
I am responsible for the health and well-being of ten boys who have had the misfortune of being born to crack whores, carnies, perverts of all kind, white trash, and gang bangers. There are 5 units (houses/cottages) on campus. I work in the sub-acute unit which means that the residents are just one step away from being hospitalized in a psychiatric care facility. So if they mess up too much with us, they can be sent away to live with the men in the white coats for a long time . These guys are not just the all-stars, they are the Hall of Famers, and living with us is usually their last, best chance.
The people under my care are not retarded, but their behavior is often completely outside the bounds of all social norms. Those of us who have been around a while affectionately refer to them as "retreads."
We use this term not only because it's a play on words, but because these kids tend to re-create the dysfunctional relationships that got them here in the first place and wind up repeating the abuse patterns perpetrated on them. That is, of course, unless we can break that cycle by somehow reaching them in a meaningful way.
That said, I should say that the last thing these guys want to do is change. They resist us like the plague. This conflict, as well as the dysfunctions they bring with them, lead to some very funny, and sometimes sad, situations.
To me, this blog is about showing a spectrum of the world that is rarely seen or talked about. In this job, we experience the full range of human emotion - anger, disgust and horror when we hear the terrible stories of abuse, as well as the hope, beauty and resilience of the human spirit when we see a kid overcome his past and start repairing his life with our help. The tension between the two extremes is where the humor lies.
The stories are all completely true, and I therefore have not used any real names of people or places.
I am not completely sure what I hope to accomplish with this. Mainly I write to help alleviate my stress and frustration; it is my release from a very emotionally draining job. As the saying goes, if you can't laugh then you have to cry. I also hope to show, in some small way, the plight of these people to the world. We can't forget that we as a society are connected to these kids; their story is our story--though much weirder.
The first three entries describe how I got hired, my first day on the job, and how I learned my first lesson.
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