Cornerstones of Care

I served as a Overnight Youth Behavioral Health Specialist at the Gillis Campus West Cottage from 2019- 2020. The overnight shift involved cleaning the dorms, monitoring the kids, passing out medicine at 6am, and waking the kids up for school. The kids I worked with at West were great and are going to do amazing things with their lives.

In the daytime you can plan fun and educational activities and bond with the kids. You have a lot of roles. You are the security that restrains kids, janitor that cleans, and nurse that changes diapers and passes medicine. It is best to know your limitations and have a self care plan in place throughout your time here because you could do anywhere between 0-4 restraints a day.

I believe that Gillis has a high turnover rate because they have a work environment that is not sustainable and cannot last long term. Code of conduct policies were not enforced and employees were allowed to do what they please with few consequences. This results in a lot of YBHS and staff leaving and soon many are doing overtime & at risk of burning out.

For example, the attendance policy at Gillis was not enforced. The code of conduct states that if an employee is late to work 16 times within a 6 month period they will be given a written warning. I doubt people recieved many warnings because our 7am staff came late 3-4 times every week. Each month I was only able to leave work on time before 7:07am about 4-6 days out of the 20 days I worked each month. Staff began to come in whenever they liked on every shift pushing it to 5- 25 minutes late multiple times a week because they knew they would not face any consequences.

YBHS were able to refuse and avoid working with certain kids & dorms/cottages. Although I was assigned to West, I was asked to serve at South multiple times and at Mabee for 3 nights. I did as I was asked and I later found out that no one else wanted to go over to Mabee or South due to the kids behavior and management would allow it. Some would often serve at South and refuse to work with certain kids and call other YBHS over. Some were also allowed to refuse to change diapers while others faced consequences. The nursing staff and clinics would send treatment suggestions through email and some YBHS wouldn’t enforce it making the treatments ineffective . These plans helped the clinic figure out whether medications were working or needed to be increased/decreased. Sometimes they were the simplest things like ensuring the kids filled out health related journals daily. These may sound like minor issues but eventually these all bloom into larger problems. If someone isn’t doing their job it effects everyone else’s job. Allowing some employees to bend the rules are not beneficial in the long run or effective for the kids

I believe the potential for burnout and the high turnover rate would be reduced if the code of conduct was enforced, employees and managers were held at a higher standard, and hiring more specialized staff such as permanent one on ones for certain kids. A lot of people ask "Why are they tolerating employees who do not follow the rules?" They tolerate them because managers and YBHS are doing so much overtime they are about to burn out. They won't be able to stay open without the required staff. Gillis is always understaffed but the problem with tolerating employees who do not meet the standards you have set for your own organization is that the quality of the work environment, morale of the employees who are following the rules, and the quality of care that the kids will receive is going to diminish.

What does this say to the employees that are doing what they are supposed to do? It says that they do not matter. Tolerating bad practices and employees will eventually kill all of your good employees and their spirits. If they continue to allow issues like the ones listed above to continue and shouldering the weight of additional jobs onto the managers and YBHS they will always have a high turnover and burnout rate. Even the managers were overworked as well

Case workers not picking up the phone so they are not really doing their job

CoC is a joke. The case team our foster girls have is a total joke. They don't care about these kids or their wellbeing. They drag their feet on important decisions, leave kids in unsafe conditions, and generally do not care or show any interest in anyone's wellbeing or quality of life. They don't communicate anything with anyone in a timely manner and blatantly ignore police and mental health provider's recommendations in regards to safety and wellbeing of children. Worst agency and group of people I've dealt with so far. I wish I had something nice to say, but there's nothing nice about these people.

A great place to work!

Clean environment, friendly staff. Considering the circumstances. All in all a good experience