Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Week 6 at Harbor Family Services

This week for some reason everyone had either really good days, or just really bad days.  For a few the good days are nothing new, they have been that way the whole time, although since its week 1 of what could be a long stay, this is probably just what seems to be called, "the grace period".  apparently, and this seems to be true, the first few weeks a resident is there, they always seem to be extremely well behaved, always doing what they need to do, and whatever is asked of them.  But than something always sends them off the deep end and you finally get to see why they got there.  Every resident has something that has happened to them, or some actions they have done to get them in long term residential care, and they never seem to go away overnight.  When you get sent on such a severe treatment plan, there is something there that takes time and alot of effort to fix.
   Running away seems to be the thing this week.  2 of the residents ran away 3 times this week, always going together.  Each time it was always 1 resident convincing the other to go.  There was some positive news though, we were able to convice the 2nd resident not to run the 4th time, he sat there begging the 1st not to run.  This seems to have set in though because only a few minutes after he ran, he walked back through the door, on his own free will, no need for law enforcement to intervene.  The policy here is if they run, call the director and let him know, maybe try a little bit, and than call law enforcement, who will find them and bring them back.  But we arent supposed to chase them down or really go look.  Occasionally a staff member will see them walking down the street and follow them till the police can arrive, but the police always bring them back if they run away.