I think that it’s important to qualify my experience before I start dispensing recommendations.  When I talk about my background, I often jump right to the most noteworthy endeavors and have taken to leaving out some of the experiences that were possibly fundamental in guiding my path.  This intro may be lengthy, but it’s here to provide the qualifications for those who want to know, and those who don’t, can skip right to the posts in which they’re interested.

My undergrad concentrations were Psychology and Applied Conflict Management.  I ended up doing an internship at the local Family Court where I started a mediation program.  I only ran the program for a few months and I honestly don’t know if they were able to sustain it following my departure…it was truly just a moment in time.  I often forget about this work, but this was actually a precursor to work I would be doing many years later.  Around the same time, I also worked briefly at a women’s shelter.  Mostly, I worked the graveyard shift, so I would handle the crisis hotline and intake emergency shelter admissions.  This was another position that I held before my career path was decided and which I often forget was part of my resume, yet, I am certain that the experience was beneficial in shaping me as a professional.

While I was working my way through college and even a few years after, for about 6 or 7 years, I worked as a competitive dance instructor and choreographer.  Once again, I wouldn’t know until years later how much this experience would benefit me.  When I began working with schools and trying to help implement solutions for managing students in classrooms, the fact that I had this experience was incredibly helpful.  I understood the challenges that teachers were facing based on different learning styles, behavior problems, students that came to class unprepared, not well, showing up with all sorts of baggage due to whatever challenges they were experiencing in the home, etc. This certainly allowed me to be much more realistic about the types of interventions that I would propose and the supports that we needed to put in place for school staff, parents and students to help overcome the challenges and risk factors they faced.

There is one moment in particular that stays at the top of my memory from my work at the dance studio.  I had about a 45 minute drive in from college and I was running late, so when I arrived I flew up the stairs in a rush to change when one of the mothers caught me and wanted to let me know that her son had a really good day at school that day.  It was the first in a long time.  He struggled behaviorally.  I thanked her for the update, thinking she was just sharing the good news, possibly letting me know that he might be more directable in gymnastics that night and rushed into the restroom to change.  When I came back out, she was still patiently waiting and continued her sentence right where she left off.  She said that her son came home and told her that it was because of his dance teacher because she (meaning me) is nice to him and helps him learn how to control himself.

I took two things from this moment and to be honest, based on how I’d failed to be gracious, running off in the middle of her story, neither of which were a compliment.  I didn’t know anything about ADHD or any other behavior disorders at the time, but I did have the common sense to understand that this child had struggles and required patience.  Truth be told, while I was able to treat him better than he was treated in his other classroom settings, I knew I could do better, and, on the inside, I felt short and sometimes unkind towards him and, in this moment, I was very ashamed that I was not better with him and other children like him.  They are so eager to please and earn our approval…to make us proud of them.

I also was ashamed that I was in such a rush that I completely failed to recognize that this mother was still in the middle of speaking to me.  To this day, I still fight that battle.  I always want people to get to the point quickly, but on that day, I realized that I could not be so caught up with my own schedule, or what was going on for myself, that I could completely fail to recognize that someone else was trying to share an important moment.  I needed to learn to get out of my own head and realize the importance of others…to pick up on the right cues.  I’m happy to say that while I may not have learned to slow down (I still want everyone to hurry up and get to the point, at least on trivial matters and strictly business – I don’t have this problem when I am dealing with people in their personal moments), I have definitely mastered the art of turning off my own ego and recognizing other people and their feelings.

My first “professional” job was as a Child Care Worker in the Intensive Treatment Unit at a Residential Treatment Facility for emotionally and behaviorally disordered youth, ages 11-17.  I loved this job and I learned more than could be imagined in the year and a half that I worked there.  While each of us had specific children that were assigned to us for which we were responsible updating progress for their therapists, the entire staff worked together to maintain the milieu.  We also assisted in running the Partial Hospitalization program.  It was through this experience that I learned the strict rules set forth by Medicaid as to what could and could not be billable under Partial Hospitalization.  Initially, on the days that I worked with the therapists to run PH, I chose to use my background as a dance instructor to lead the therapeutic groups.

These children were not allowed outside of the locked unit, except rarely into our courtyard when the behavior of those in the cottage had been acceptable enough that we didn’t see any risk at having some of the staff accompany at least those well-behaving youth outdoors.  Many of the children used food as an outlet to comfort themselves, so a number of them gained large amounts of weight after entering the facility and few developed any sort of healthy outlet.  I thought dance and, even more so, some acrobatics would be wonderful for these children.  Little did I know how successful it would be.

I had no idea what a great idea it was until I read input on an evaluation from supervisor who spoke about how great it was to see the hardened gang children cheering other kids on, encouraging another to do a front roll, letting their guards down and just being children.  Unfortunately, Medicaid decided that this type of activity could not be found billable under their PH policies.  This is truly a shame.  This activity got these kids to learn so many helpful skills, self-esteem, anger management, working well with others, coping with frustration, taking turns, respect, the list goes on.  It was honestly better than making them sit in a circle and asking them, “how does that make you feel,” but according to Medicaid policies, we had to stop this activity in the group sessions.

I refused to make these kids go back to doing traditional therapy sessions.  PH is 3 hours long, 7 days a week.  So, I thought about other ways to engage this population of youth.  I will talk more on my solution for this in a separate article, but this was ultimately the dilemma that propelled me to begin writing bibliotherapy and cinematherapy as a solution to traditional group therapy to handle sensitive issues and better relate to teens, different ethnicities and difficult experiences.

It was here that I learned, truly, what it means to be part of “the system” and honestly, what exactly “the system” is.  I think that is a fairly meaningless phrase for most people.  We think we understand to what we are referring when we utter those words, but most people truly have no idea.  There really is a set of rules and regulations that were set by heaven knows who and heaven knows when. In some communities, some of these regulations were set by some body of people at some point in time so unidentifiable that they truly do seem like that were arbitrarily put in place.  I am sure that at the point in time the person or persons who proposed these ideas believed that they were meaningful and in the best interest of the parties on whose behalf they were attempting to take action; however, it is utterly clear that by and large many of the solutions set forth by the system are not helpful and in some cases do more harm than good.

This is not a blanket statement about all policy.  There is, however, a problem with policymakers who have not spent adequate time becoming intimately familiar with child welfare and education issues proposing policy that ultimately gets passed that truly limits the ability of professionals in those fields to act in the best interest of children.  And, for those working in these systems it is a difficult obstacle to overcome in gaining trust when the path you have to follow for the youth you are serving truly may not be in their best interest, but is completely dictated by policy.  When you deal with street-savvy youth who know the system better than they do any father or mother, they can tell you this right out of the gate.  The system ain’t there to help them, they don’t trust it and often, it will put them in a worse place than they’d land on the street or on their own.

So, I worked in a truly fantastic facility with a qualified and warm staff. For this, I was very fortunate. I honestly can’t say if that was true about every unit at the facility.  I hope so. I believe so.  I never heard otherwise from residents that spent time in other units, but I had no firsthand knowledge and only knew the staff in my cottage.  Our facility had an open boys unit, an open girls unit, an alternative school, a transitional living unit and the co-ed locked intensive treatment unit in which I worked (if I remember correctly). While, yes, I can say that maybe there were times I did not think our staff handled a situation the best, an individual may have overreacted or could’ve managed a situation better when responding to violence, no one ever out-and-out abused, harmed or took advantage of a vulnerable child.  They honestly and truly did in their hearts the very best that they could and maybe in a moment, as a human, had a reaction, that I wish they hadn’t in dealing with this particular population, but they never caused harm.  Sadly, I learned early from our residents that is not always the case.  So many of these children are taken into residential treatment facilities only to be abused sexually and physically at the hands of their caregivers, repeating the cycle of what they experienced in their homes.  And, to even add to the horror of the experience, when (or if) the children are brave enough to report the experience, they may be removed from the facility, but, so often, the professional in question will not only not be forced to face criminal charges, they will not even lose their job.

Most of the youth in my unit were adjudicated in some formal criminal matter, but found too emotionally or mentally disabled to be housed in the juvenile justice system.  Nearly all of them had some form of severe abuse, neglect and/or abandonment issue in their past, as well.  Most of these children’s violence and rage was a result of the inadequate coping skills that they had developed to deal with the very extreme sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, abandonment and neglect that they faced.

I learned that while Children’s Services were involved in some level with most of the families, they believed that reunification was the best policy.  So, when a child would work hard on all their treatment goals and the parent who was part of the abuse or part of allowing the abuse or part of the neglect or just in a world of their own demons would fail week after week to show up and participate in the therapy sessions and the kid is telling you this is not the best thing for them (of course, every child wants their parent to show up and get it right and wants to have a relationship with their parent)…they are really on track and success is in sight and they don’t want to go home and take care of their parent or back to the environment, they finally know what it’s like to be safe and off drugs and cared for and fed and succeeding in school and not the caretaker of all their siblings, and suddenly, their parent shows up for one therapy session and “the system” says the kid has to go try a home visit because the kid has made so much progress and they look at you pleadingly and then defeatedly and then they tell you that they feel betrayed and then leading up to the visit all their progress starts to go out the window because they start acting out…this is what “the system” does not understand.

I learned about the children who spent so many years of their youth in the system disowned by their families for telling on the sexual abuse, praying every year for a foster family and truly never losing faith or hope, panicking as their 18^th year approached, fearing they would age out without ever having the chance to get a family…for some it was the chance to have a mom to accept them, for others it was wanting a Christmas tree while still a child, for others a backyard and others, it was just being wanted, but by 17 ½, you could see the broken in their eyes.

These kids were so smart and they never failed to make sure to keep you in check.  I love that I learned early on that I had better live the words I speak and be an example. I suppose it’s a choice for each professional to make, but it was certainly the choice that I wanted to make after working with these youth.  I can still remember them calling out the staff and, one of the most powerful things I remember them saying was, “I ain’t sign you up for this job.”  A 13-year-old should never have to point that out to a fully grown, professional adult…

I (unfortunately) learned how to place a human being in a restraint and what a chemical restraint is and what an isolation room is.  It all makes me physically ill.  I learned that there are far too many very young children at the desperate brink of wanting to harm themselves or others when they are overwhelmed with thoughts or emotions that they do not know how to handle.

I learned what a true psychotic break looks like.  It’s not at all what you have seen on any Hollywood movie screen.  It is not a frightening character lurking in shadows.  It hurts your entire heart and soul to watch…even if someone is threatening you harm (at least if you are clear on what you are truly witnessing, if you understand the pain and fear of the person who is going through it)…one of the instances that I was seriously injured and had to go to urgent care from work occurred after working one of the worst episodes I’ve ever seen, and forget that I may have faced a physical injury, I can tell you the whole episode was much more painful to watch. Every ounce of this human’s torture rose to the surface and it was simply more than she could reconcile.  That is honestly what happens and it was with compassion that we brought her back from this violent episode.  I remember her laying on the gurney when they were taking her to the psych ward crying and reaching for me in tears and fear afterward…she hadn’t meant me any harm, the damage done her throughout her life was just greater than her mind knew how to handle and fortunately, in the moment of the episode, I understood this.  Whatever fear I may have felt could never have surpassed the heart-wrenching sorrow that I felt that this human being was suffering such wounds that led to this indignant painful behavior and likely a curse that would haunt her for life.

I learned that every one of these children was talented and beautiful beyond belief.  You cannot conceive of the talents that “at-risk” children possess.  This is where I came to reject, whole-heartedly, that anyone is “born evil.”  Such a thing simply does not exist. There are circumstances, a combination of which with a person is born and experiences, that can cause them to execute acts that are breathtaking in their atrocity, but everyone is valuable and redeemable given the right interventions and setting (which I will speak to in subsequent articles).  These children were born with and endured afflictions and abuse well beyond what most of us have demonstrated the capacity with which to cope.  Think about it, we have a rough day at work and we need a drink, an increasing number of people smoke pot recreationally, no longer for fun even, but to sleep at night and, darn near everyone is taking a pill of some kind, for something, to handle their life.  These children didn’t have the option to escape into drugs and alcohol.  Yes, most were on prescription medications, but despite the very real abuses they suffered, each had an amazing light and at their worst, threatening, even knife wielding moments – you could still see the glimmer of light because they knew they were loved.  It is true that the particular professional interacting with them in a moment of crisis may garner a different response – one with unresolved issues, anger of their own, a short temper or an inability to freely reflect that calm love, yet create a safe, stern environment would not cause the same resolution that I have learned comes from generating this space.

While I was learning all these things, I was apparently demonstrating skill that my supervisors noted and, this, along with the curriculum I was writing for the groups that I was assisting in facilitating led them to encourage me to consider graduate school, as I needed to be licensed to be able to run groups myself or be considered for a supervisory role.  While I never really had considered further schooling, nor was I sure my long-term goals – I knew I loved this job, but also knew my future held more, I just wasn’t sure exactly what or the path to get there, nonetheless, I enrolled in a graduate Community Counseling program so that I could work towards becoming a Licensed Professional Counselor.  The choices really came down to counseling, social work or psychology.  I knew social work was not the right path for me and the problem with psychology was that you need to have your doctorate before you can actually be licensed.  So, I chose counseling…this was still an interesting choice for me because, while I was not sure my path, despite my certainty that it involved providing mental health and similar services to youth and likely adults, too, I was pretty confident that I was never going to be providing therapy/counseling, at least not in the traditional sense.  In fact, I was pretty certain that nothing I did was going to be traditional.

So, I started graduate school with the immediate goal of working my way into a supervisory position at the treatment center where I worked.  Within a few months I received a call regarding a new position.  This position, this community, the children, the families, the professionals with whom I worked are largely responsible for allowing me to gain the expertise needed in the variety of different disciplines I have acquired, to confront so many challenges and seek answers, coming to the realization that it is possible for communities to be self-sufficient in resolving gaps in programming and services with only a single resource and a limited budget.

When I first started my search for jobs, I had applied for a position as a Diversion Officer.  The community where I interviewed did not hire me only because of my lack of professional experience; however, when a neighboring community was looking to fill a similar position, they remembered me.  The neighboring community, Struthers, Ohio, was not only looking for a new Diversion Officer, but they were looking for someone to head a first of its kind Diversion Program.

Traditionally, Diversion is offered by the juvenile courts/police to first time minor misdemeanor offenders who are given the option to complete a series of requirements and, if done successfully, the youth will not be charged for their offense.  Struthers had the forward-thinking to create a program that included youth that were also at-risk of expulsion from school.  What was interesting, was that this town was led by administrators of the City and School who did not see eye-to-eye, and this fact was no secret to the community.  Other communities got in the way of their own success by refusing to admit that they actually had a problem that needed to be addressed.  This community, despite whatever the politics and personality differences there may have been at the highest level, were willing to put it aside and acknowledge that there were problems with drugs, alcohol, theft, delinquency and they allowed that to set the foundation for success.

With the background I had, obviously, I had no experience in policing or in education.  To be perfectly honest, when I started, I didn’t even have a clear understanding of diversion at all.  The leaders in Struthers had asked the girls that ran the 2 neighboring programs to work with me to assist in helping set up our program.  Aside from just learning the basics from them about diversion, the 2 most useful things that came from the time spent with them were 1) They worked in more affluential towns which chose to deny that the youth actually had problems that needed addressed. As mentioned, Struthers’ willingness to acknowledge that there was a cause for concern allowed us to create actionable steps to address the need.  I’m not sure I would have realized how key this was or ever known to give my community this credit had I not had exposure to the struggles they faced trying to overcome their communities’ desires to hide the problems.  I remember them pointing to signs on the school walls that said “Drug Free Zone” and saying that because the sign is hanging on the wall, it must be true…that their administration would simply not engage in a conversation about the possibility that the youth had any issues.  Most of the problem was because the parents were putting more money into the schools and therefore, did not want to be confronted about their children’s problems, so the administration stayed silent.  Struthers’ fearless approach may have been based on the fact that they really had nothing to lose, but we need to overcome this in our more affluential areas and get our eyes open if we really want to save our kids. 2) I learned a great deal about the art of community collaboration.  These girls had a great working relationship with one another and had established a good network within the county.  I will spend some time in the additional articles talking about the collaborative programs that were born out of this working relationship.

On my first day, I didn’t have the background on the relationship between the City and School administration or the politics in the town.  I walked into the detective bureau and one of the detectives wrote a sign and put it on the front of his desk, “No slave can serve two masters.”  I had no idea what that meant.  I do now.  And, I have the solution to the problem…When you look beyond the competing interests of the parties you serve to what each can contribute to support the common goals, you become highly efficient and accomplish beyond what anyone imagined.

When I first started, I thought that my lack of knowledge about policing and criminal justice would be the most intimidating part of the job.  I’d learned an amazing amount about behavioral health and mental disorders and understood about youth who had interacted with the law, but did not understand the law or the process and that seemed imperative for this role.  Around the police department, they also referred to me as a “bleeding heart” and a “tree-hugger,” and many held the belief that these kids just needed someone to “knock some sense into ’em.”

Before, I ever even started, I received notice to attend my first expulsion hearing.  I remember sitting in the room when the District Superintendent, Special Services Director, Principal, and Assistant Principal asked my opinion/input on a variety of matters related to how to address this youth.  I felt real panic.  “What for are y’all asking me,” was the only thought in my head.  Surely, this room of the very well-educated individuals, with doctorates, graduate degrees, children of their own, years of experience, etc., did not expect me to come with the solutions to all of these problems.  I had already been warned by one of the detectives that this young man across the table from whom I sat had been, throughout the years, one of the town’s most difficult youth, had a doozy of a family, was nearly 18 anyhow and was such a piece of work, he was about to get kicked out of the alternative school (meaning he’d already been removed from the traditional school environment as an alternative to expulsion for his behavior problems) and on day one, these people thought I was somehow qualified to bring the answers.  I was certain that I was not and I could tell, just from my very limited experience with the people sitting in this room, that they knew A LOT and I needed to learn every bit of it.

It became very clear, quickly, that to be successful, I needed to be an expert on EVERYTHING.  Not only did I need to fully understand the roles and challenges of the various different professionals who interacted with the youth in the program, but I needed to understand the governing rules and regulations about education, child welfare, health care and juvenile justice.  Many of my students were on IEPs or involved with Special Services, so I had to learn all of the Special Education laws.  I needed to know that diabetes, allergies, PMS could present symptoms like bipolar, attention deficit and behavior disorders, not to play a medical doctor, but to help ensure that the correct referrals were made and to help families who simply did not have the skills to advocate for themselves communicate properly with the mental health and medical professionals serving them.  

There is no way that formal education could replace the ability of the individual professionals in this town to each have worked with me to share their expertise and experience.  That is the key to creating a highly successful program that can comprehensively address so many needs.  I had the willingness of all these highly qualified professionals to come together and provide their knowledge, input and guidance to shape the areas of the program that needed their direction.  We were all willing to work and re-work a proposed intervention until we’d looked at it from all the different angles, poked holes in it and received feedback from enough people who it had finally taken the shape we needed.

During the first few months, as they prepared my office, I spent my time with the detectives. I barely spoke; I just watched and listened and each officer had their own way of imparting their wisdom.  I had to learn the laws and the nuances of how they were enforced, the process of the system, how and why people cooperate, work with and against authority.  This foundation was key to how things would be set up.

I established a direct and open line of communication with all of the teachers and officers.  Not just to learn as much as I could from all their different perspectives, but I also knew that each of these different individuals had a separate and unique relationship with the children and the parents with whom I was working.  They would each be able to give me different pieces of the puzzle.  I have learned in life that my gift is my ability to turn off my own ego and truly be able to look at a situation from someone else’s point of view.  When you are working in a situation of this nature, it’s amazing how much more is added when you can consider the dynamics of so many others’.  Just the mere fact of hearing how other people feel about the child with whom you are interacting and understanding what it would be like to be perceived and received as they are is helpful.

Along the way, I learned the challenges of the No Child Left Behind Act, difficulties for teachers with Inclusion and what it meant to manage one or two children with a behavior problem or a gifted child who was acting out, while being forced to focus not on actually teaching to learn, but the things that would get kids to learn the content standards that would get them to pass the tests to get the school identified as a “highly qualified school” or just the certain items to get them to pass the test that the State issued to get them promoted to the next grade, not actually how to think, or comprehend, or write, or any of that.  Every intervention that I needed to develop to help youth enrolled in the program had to somehow conform with all of the regulations and standards set forth, particularly if it was a special education student and, I also needed to be mindful of not making this program one more burdensome thing for a teachers who were barely able to attend to the role of classroom instruction with all of the other expectations and individual needs of so many students.  Somehow, I needed what I was doing for these students to be useful as part of the larger solution.

I learned about the mental health’s systems idea of using the “least restrictive option,” which usually comes down to the fact that insurance does not want to pay for an inpatient or long-term treatment stay at a hospital or facility even if a child really needs it.  So, if you have a child who truly seems to be a risk to themselves or someone else or who has a real drug or alcohol problem, if they haven’t failed out of less restrictive options a number of times before, they have to be sent home over and over again until the problem reaches a critical mass, even if the parent and the criminal justice system have been dealing with the child for an ongoing time and you, as the professional, finally convince the parent to work with you and are looking at a kid at death’s doorstep or know that sending them home means that they very well could show up at school tomorrow armed and ready to harm someone else.  I learned that because of this, the police don’t feel empowered because they can’t request assistance for mental health treatment in extreme cases and, if they make the judgment that it seems to be honestly a behavioral issue with no mental health component or resulting from a drug or alcohol issue and they take the child to the juvenile detention center, there is often so much overcrowding that unless it is the most extreme case, the child may not even be detained there.

So you may recall, that I had mentioned that I was getting my graduate degree at this time, in Community Counseling.  I mentioned that I really never saw myself actually being an individual or family therapist and I was becoming more certain of it as time continued on.  Not that I don’t believe in the therapeutic process, I do see it as a vital tool and I made many referrals for therapy in conjunction with other recommendations, but I definitely think that in the movement toward well-being, especially for children and families there is a more holistic type of programming that is required. In fact, I just was seeing a more effective an efficient way to provide services for everyone in communities.  Obviously, I was working to create solutions and the further I went in my education, the more certain I was about the existing gap.

I was taking the clinical counseling class in which we had to role play.  I remember this day so clearly.  I had been working as Diversion Officer long enough to feel as though the individuals I was working with, not just the professionals, but the children and families, had really challenged and changed my beliefs.  I really didn’t come to them as a “run of the mill” social worker type, to begin with, but at this point, I was definitely marching to the beat of my own drum…their drum.  I was doing what was in the best interest of that town and each individual person I encountered and, sometimes, the clinical counselor approach didn’t seem the best.  Again, everything has it’s time and place.

So, in this “role play,” I was the “counselor” and my “client,” who I was meeting for the first time, described her problem as being a single mother who had recently become unemployed, did not qualify for public assistance, was not receiving any money from the father of the children, had looked in her refrigerator and found it empty the night before and was heartbroken putting her children to bed hungry.  I took the approach of asking the “client” if she had reached out to Help Hotline, the local number that could put families in touch with services and resources.

My professor stopped me immediately.  She said, “You are such a bulldozer,” explaining that this woman just came in for mental health counseling and that the first step is to acknowledge what she just explained and asked her how it makes her feel.  Now, truly, I consider myself a highly qualified mental health professional and honestly, by that time in my career, I was more than familiar with the importance of recognizing and engaging individuals in discussions about their feelings and I assure you, anyone you ask who has seen me in my work will say that I am among the planet’s most compassionate people, but this is one of the prime examples of why I do not agree with always taking the standard counseling approach.  There is a time and a place, and I did not believe, in any way, that this was the time or place.  What I know, is that if you ain’t got no food, you feel hungry.  And, if you ain’t got no food, and you can’t feed your kids, you feel hungry and worried.  And, if you ain’t got no food, and can’t feed your kids, and reach out for professional help, the last thing you want someone to say to you is, “how does that make you feel?”  What?!!?!  A hungry person who is desperate about the welfare of their children isn’t even in the right mental state to talk about their feelings.  They need their basic needs met in order to do that work.  And, I found my professor’s response unempathetic.  Now that I think about it…what kind of compassionate counseling instructor calls a student a bulldozer in class???  Anyhow….

What my job taught me is that sometimes, you just need to stop and talk to people about available resources.  You need to jump right in with someone and let them know that there is help available and that you are willing to help. So many people seek help, counseling or whatever, because they honestly just don’t know what to do and I am not a believer that you should always make a person find an answer on their own or do it themselves.  I think you need to assess how low a person is and sometimes, you do have to jump in and actually point a person in the right direction or even do some things for them to get them going in the right direction.  I do not believe that this is enabling.  I am a firm believer that when people get really low, too low to stand on their own, they may need someone to carry them.  I believe that you carry a person until they can walk on their own.  This is not enabling.  It’s getting a person strong enough to get them to the place that you can actually teach them the skills they need to take over on their own.  Obviously, as a professional, just how far you actually intervene has to do with establishing good boundaries.

I finished this class with, and concluded my time in this program, a 4.0 despite the apparent difference in opinion, but decided there was a better way to seek the answers I was looking for.  I decided to finish my graduate training by pursuing a Master of Arts in Forensic Psychology….this was one of the best decisions of my life.  I chose to go to American School of Professional Psychology in Washington D.C. where they offered a hybrid program, about 50% online and 50% in person, which meant about every other weekend, I had to drive from Youngstown, Ohio to Washington, D.C.  I’d like to state, for the record, that I completed the program in 16 months, with a 4.0.  The other compelling things about this particular program were that it was the program linked to the Department of Defense’s Polygraph Institute, which meant that all sworn officers around the country who were participating in this program were earning credit toward the Forensic PsychoPhysiology degree.  Additionally, the majority of the program’s instructors were DOD employees.

While I may have been working in a police department and on some levels, sympathetic to their experiences, in my role and in my mentality, I was, for all intents and purposes, the anti-cop.  So, along with, yet again, having all of these people with a wealth of experience to learn from, it has been of endless benefit to me to have people with truly such polarizing ideas and opinions working and learning around me to continually be challenging my position and approach on everything.  Trust me, when your position is constantly taken to task, when you stand among the best and brightest investigators this country has to offer, who have seen the worst criminal behavior and hold the compassion that I do for those involved in the criminal justice system, having my beliefs about rehabilitation, intervention and holistically changing the system, sometimes it can become tiring to have to go toe-to-toe continuously with these individuals, but honestly, as I have been able to win over one after the next with solid ideas and proof, it only has made me more confident in my ideology.

As I continued my work in Struthers, my role, unofficially, began to grow.  Several things began to emerge as ways to capitalize upon my position and skills.  Simply, by the fact that I was working with the population of at-risk youth, many of their parents were those involved with the police or courts in the community.  With my relationship with these individuals, it was not unreasonable for our officers to consult with me on cases involving them.  Also, when a case was to be adjudicated in the municipal court, all the social service agencies involved with the family could leverage the court for a pre-trial disposition that may be in the best interest of the entire family, dependent on the issue.  Quickly, it became apparent that there was a benefit to having one person who could coordinate these efforts.  While it was well outside my job description, it was a natural extension of my work and a clear benefit to the community.  Despite there being no specific governing body to set ethics regarding the sharing of information, confidentiality and boundaries of this type of interaction in my role as Diversion Officer, I’d had enough ethics training, to sit with my officers prior to moving in this direction and establish the boundaries that would be in the best interest of the children and families in the program prior to engaging in assisting criminally.

This work began to springboard into requests from the Municipal Court Judge to provide occasional recommendations for situations within the court as there was also an overcrowding situation in the adult jails and a lack of availability of proper services.

We also recognized the importance of providing for needs for which resources were not available.  Often, families would come to me in times of great struggle, unable to afford food or the gas bill in the frigid Ohio winters; sometimes, it was a child who could no longer face the ridicule of their peers because they owned only one pair of jeans and had to wear them every day which was creating an issue of truancy in order to avoid the humiliation; other times, a child may require a procedure that insurance did not deem medically necessary that was contributing to their low self-esteem or day-to-day difficulties; in other instances, a child may be removed from a parent due to neglect or abuse and were in need of personal hygiene items or underwear and unwilling to go to the new guardian or child welfare worker, but were willing to come to me with their needs.  In all of these cases, I could count on the school and City employees to ensure that the needs of the youth were met with full discretion.  This is part of that evidence and just one path to how communities can be all-encompassing and self-sufficient.

My peers became very generous in their giving, often making donations to me on behalf of the program so that I would have funds available to use as needed, rather than having to reach out only after I was presented with a need.  Their generosity was so great, in fact, that I was often very nervous to be entrusted with so much money at my own discretion that no one ever questioned me about. Everyone knew that this fund existed and everyone also knew that I had a connection to all the community resources in the county. While my main role was to be the Juvenile Diversion Officer, as needs emerged for any youth in the town, and eventually, anyone in the town, concerned individuals did not hesitate to make referrals to me requesting assistance, as needed, and certainly, a child in need could not be turned away simply because they did not fit the criteria of being “at-risk.”

My specific reasons for leaving this program and moving to Los Angeles really aren’t important for this introduction.  When I did move to L.A., I had the good fortune to end up with a whole new group of really talented professionals from whom I could learn while working as an Investigator at the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office.  I also found myself around a large number of people who had resolved themselves to just go through the motions and accept being part of the broken system.  In this line of work, I whole-heartedly disagree with the sentiment, “You can’t take your job home with you.”  I don’t think that you should allow your work to be all-consuming, or to have a negative impact on your mental or physical well-being, but I do think that the work we do is truly a part of the world in which we live; therefore, as we are working with human beings, we should be impacted by what we are experiencing on a daily basis, it should shape how we view the world around us and make us question all of our thoughts.  You need to constantly grow and change with your work.

So many people so harshly judge those who are involved in the criminal justice system.  Having begun my work with children and having a real understanding of the challenges and struggles that often lead them down the path they take and the obstacles to rehabilitation and proper services, I think there is a real lack of understanding in both the general public and the policymakers of where the problems really lie and how to deal with issues of criminality.  And, if I haven’t made my position clear yet, I firmly believe that the solution is much easier than is perceived.  Because of the beliefs and prejudices held and the lack of anyone really providing any sort of detailed, empathic examples of how things could be different, we just continue down the same path.  At LA County, it was clear to me that the same approach we began to utilize in small town Struthers could also be utilized in large city.  In the County system, even those that wanted to do more, had a very limited ability to intervene, rehabilitate or improve the world. There are so many more resources, financially and otherwise available in Los Angeles than in a community like Struthers.  If effectively utilized, so much more good could be achieved.

I realized in working at the County, it had been a fantastic learning experience.  I had now had the opportunity to interact with a variety of cultures and races involved with the criminal system with which I’d not had previous experience.  I first had experience with African-American gangs and the Italian mob in Youngstown, but I learned about other gangs and organized crime and the underlying needs of those who join and/or want to leave these groups.  And, with the homeless population and VA Center here in LA, I learned about the issues facing these populations, as well.

I knew that in the role that I was in, I was not using my skills as I was meant.  This was another valuable endeavor and I was only more certain that I needed to use this experience along with all my previous work to contribute to positive change.