Job interview today
I had the job interview at the children’s home today and I think it went well. The job looks difficult. It’s working with children age 10 to 17 who are living at the home while they get their treatment plans in order, usually a 6 to 12 month stay. The children have all been removed from their parents care for abuse or severe neglect and many also have substance abuse or mental health issues. They are, said the woman who interviewed me, very angry kids.
“But I love them,” she told me. “I’ve been here 10 years.”
“And you have the calluses to prove it, right?” I joked.
“And the bite marks!” she laughed.
I’ve worked with angry kids under 12 and angry women over 12 but not with groups of adolescents. We had some clients placed in voucher rooms on the same floor as our program by the youth shelter nearby. The youth shelter was open (first come first served, in a large room) so they placed more vulnerable clients in cheap hotel rooms around town. We (weirdly) had hotel rooms on the same floor as the shelter so they would try to voucher their clients in with us and then have them connect with us for some services.
(Allow me to digress and say that having a hotel on the same floor as a shelter was a really bad idea. We would turn down women inappropriate for shelter and they turn around and either come up with the $7.50 fee for a bed in the hostel room or else find someone at Metro Crisis to voucher them in. So we would have women on the floor who were having psychotic episodes or shooting up or what have you and could do nothing about it. At least we could kick our own clients out if they were dangerous. We had one mom and her (adult) daughter lock themselves in a stairwell and try to commit suicide. Lots of crazy stuff. I went out on the roof once to talk to a drug-addled young woman staying at our hotel because she was sitting on the ledge, completely hallucinating. Our housekeeper called 911 and they police came and told her to walk it off then left. I was really worried for her safety and then I saw that she had a syringe in her pocket so we called 911 again thinking they could get her for possession and maybe take her some place to detox but when she saw them coming, she took off out the front door and we never saw her again. Her parents — who had paid for her room with us to try and keep an eye on her — kept calling us asking if we had seen her. It was really sad.)
Anyway sometimes the youth shelter asked me to work with their vouchered clients on parenting issues. Our grants also allowed us to bring in teen moms; otherwise our clients had to be 18 or emancipated minors. I’ve *never* worked with teen boys.
It was great to be talking to someone in the field again and I know I asked good questions during that part of the interview because I know the ones to ask. How do you get your funding? How are children referred here? Where do they go afterwards? What if their treatment plan is disrupted? I know the lingo; it’s familiar to me. We also talked about sexual minority issues and about feminism and about how lousy social work pays so we clicked personally, too.
The challenge is that it’s way more hours than I expected and they’re long hours (4pm to 12am). That would be really hard on me. I would still have my 2+ articles a month to write because I both need and want to continue my career as a writer. Plus there’s the homeschooling not to mention my life with Brett and my need for some down time. But I feel like with careful planning and the support of friends and family that it could very well be do-able.
I’m hoping that they offer me the job and that the benefits are good enough and inexpensive enough that maybe Brett could go to a part-time job. That would be wonderful. Goodness knows he needs and deserves a break and then he could help with homeschooling and I would be able to write. Of course the reason we’re considering this job is that we need to pay off some bills though, so it would really depend on a lot of different things. Also, when another child enters our family, we want me home full-time again so hopefully this is a temporary change.
But I miss this kind of work and as nervous as I am when contemplating it, I think I’m good at it and lord knows I would learn a lot. The truth is that I’m intimidated by this particular population (teens scare me) but I was anxious about the shelter, too, before I started. New things are always a little worrisome so I try not to let that dictate my course of action too much.
I’ll let you know if she calls with a job offer.
I used to work in an adolescent group home and I loved it! Once you get to know the kids they’re much less intimidating. And, if you work 4-12, maybe somebody else will have to fix dinner!
I helped start a clinic for high-risk adolescents at an inner city clinic when I was living in Boston. Prior to that I had been working with adults only. The teens were from very unstable home situations and had lots of issues (drugs, unintended pregnacies, etc). I loved it. I found them to be refreshingly honest. They didn’t have the same sort of defense mechanisms that adults can have. One of the best professional experiences I have had.