You Asked…

I finally started working on Wednesday of this week in Jefferson County at the Hillsboro Treatment Center. In short, once I’m settled into the groove, I’ll be given one of three “cottages” with 8-12 boys that I’ll work with. As a youth specialist, my job is to mostly keep the boys (who are referred to a “clients”) in line and in control of themselves and the group. So far, the group I’ve been observing is really good about self-regulating their behaviors and can keep themselves on-task and focused much better than I expected. Of course, I’ve been bombarded with all kinds of questions from how old I am to if I’d punch someone back if they punched me (which was a little tricky to answer!). I haven’t gone to the official training yet, but I’m going next month and hopefully I’ll be assigned a permanent group and shift by then and have some sort of routine worked out. There are three possible schedules – 8am to 4pm, 4pm to 12am, and 12am to 8am. I’ve been working the 8-4 shift this week and next, and the timing is ideal to get to see Andy, but it’s a more exhausting shift since the clients are awake and going the whole 8 hours. The others I think would be fine for a bit of a break, but would get pretty boring since the boys are sleeping for a majority of them.

So, since I’ve had some Facebook requests for how my job was going, I thought I’d just let everybody know this way, and we’re seeing Mom and Dad tomorrow anyway, so that’ll get the word around pretty quickly, too!