Upon graduating from college with a degree in social work and moving out West to be near my family, I got my first “real” job at a residential facility for behaviorally and emotionally disturbed children. My title was “Youth Treatment Specialist,” which, while it might sound lofty, was about as entry-level as you could get without emptying the garbage and mopping floors. Essentially, I functioned as a parent to a group of about 12 children ranging in age from 6 to 12 between the hours of 1:00 and 11:00 p.m. four days per week. Nearly all of these children were wards of the juvenile court and had been removed from their birth parents’ care for either abusive or neglectful circumstances. For a number of varying reasons, however, none of these children were able to maintain safe behaviors in a foster home. So. When you can’t live with your birth parents and you can’t live with foster parents, you get to live at a “rez” with locked doors, on-site therapists, and “staff” for parents... even if you’re 7, still speak with a lisp, and sleep with a blankie.
Working rez is rubber-meets-the-road child welfare — the Marines of child welfare, if you will. We were trained how to defend ourselves physically and how to hold or “restrain” children when they became dangerous to either themselves or others (we used both sets of skills on a weekly, if not daily, basis). We learned and implemented lock-down procedures in the event of a riot. We dispensed alarming combinations of psychotropic medications to pint-sized humans up to three times per day. And amidst the defiance, aggression, destruction, and general chaos, we helped with homework, led activities, cooked and served dinner, and got 12 kids ready for bed and asleep.
The logistics of managing behaviors were a cake-walk, however, in comparison to the emotional challenge of working with such traumatized, damaged children. Reading these children’s files literally turned my stomach and lit an aimless rage within me at how such injustice could exist. I would play checkers with the kids or read them stories and try to imagine what their eyes have seen, what their ears have heard, and what terror and loneliness has filled their hearts. I would hold a child’s arm or legs in a 3-person restraint while he lay face down on the floor screaming and think, “What flashbacks is he experiencing right now? In how many ways are we re-traumatizing this child in our efforts to help him?” I was monitoring an 8-year-old girl in the locked safe room one evening and was desperately trying to motivate her to calm down so I could unlock the door and get her out of there. I went through my standard bag of tricks, to no avail, and then finally reminded her that it was bedtime and it would be no fun at all if she had to sleep in the safe room. She stopped her pacing and looked me directly in the eye through the window in the door and said, “I have slept and woken up in much worse places than this.”
Perhaps my worst night there, and certainly the one event that to this day cycles almost daily through my memory, involved a 10-year-old girl that I’ll call Amy. When Amy was barely old enough to walk, she swiped some LSD off of her parents’ coffee table and ingested it. I’m not sure how much she took or how long it was before her parents realized they’d better get her some medical attention, but in the end, the hard wiring in her brain was permanently damaged. She walked a bit like an ostrich, cautious and jerky, and she resembled an ostrich, too, with her perpetually wide eyes and wiry frame. Her ability to accurately interpret any sensory input was grossly altered such that she was always either totally tuned out to events occurring around her and lost in her own world or so overwhelmed with noises and lights and smells that she would begin screaming and thrashing. Unlike most of the other children, Amy was not oppositional or violent. But when she was in one of her fits, her body harnessed a strength beyond her size, and she could be every bit as unsafe or destructive as any of the other children. And given her mental and emotional disconnection from reality, it was seemingly impossible to process with her toward the goal of more constructive behavior. No one really knew what to do with her, which is why she came to us, but we didn’t really know what to do with her either.
After maybe one year of living at rez, Amy was stable enough for us to begin looking for adoptive homes for her. Her birth parents’ parental rights had been terminated by the court, so she was legally free to be adopted. We were thrilled to learn one day that a family was very interested in Amy and would be taking her to their home for the weekend to begin the transition process. For her protection, we did not tell Amy that this would be her “adoptive” family or her “forever” family, but despite her addled mental state, she got it. She literally skipped out the door, beaming, when the family arrived. Two days later, she returned with her arms full of gifts and back-to-back stories. She may have even referred to the parents as “mom” and “dad” once or twice. We shared her excitement and began preparing for her good-bye party (a very big deal in a rez program).
Imagine our shock several days later when we learned that after spending those two days with Amy, the family did not feel they could care for her after all. Her therapist broke the news to her, as gently as possible, and surprisingly, Amy did not become upset and simply continued with her daily routine as if there was never any family at all. But then the exact same scenario played out a second time. And, horrifically, a third time as well. Within about six months of the first family, two other families learned about her, invited her to their homes for the weekend, and then backed out immediately after.
I was working the night she got the news about the third family. She walked out of her therapist’s office with her face flushed, her eyes wet, and her hands clenched. We desperately wanted to avoid any restraints or seclusions for her that night, so I stuck by her side the entire evening, distracting her with conversation or activities when she began to get frustrated or overwhelmed. She made it the whole night until bedtime when she began to yell uncontrollably at another child for a reason I don’t remember. She would’ve attacked the child if another staff member hadn’t been between them to block Amy, and between the two of us, we simply corralled her into her room and shut the door before a restraint would become necessary. She screamed and thrashed and kicked for several minutes until she finally collapsed on the floor, sobbing, with her head bowed and her long auburn hair hiding her face. Alone with her at this time, I knelt down beside her and put my arm around her shoulders. She leaned into me as though her muscles could no longer support even her tiny frame and whispered, with a lucidity and honesty that haunts me to this day, “Kimberlee, I can’t do this anymore.” Oh, my heart ached. I didn’t know what I could do to comfort this hurting girl. I helped her into her bed, got her snuggled under her covers, and then rubbed her back and her face and her hands. Any sort of physical touching outside of restraints and side-hugs is strictly forbidden in a rez program because of the prevalence of past sexual abuse for most of the children; even the most innocuous touch runs the risk of being either stimulating or confusing to a child with such trauma. I can understand how, on paper, that is a wise policy, but can you imagine being ten-year-old Amy on that night having not been properly bear-hugged or physically soothed in over a year and a half? I’m not sure I gave it more than a fleeting thought; I just did it. I sat beside her and rubbed her back and sang to her like my mom used to do for me when I was little. Her muscles melted under the unfamiliar touch, and she eventually stopped crying. I stayed with her until she drifted off to sleep.
I wept for Amy the whole drive home that night. Sadness flooded my heart, but anger also boiled through my veins. I was furious at the obvious targets—her parents, the adoptive families, the stupid rez rules—but I was also oddly enraged that I was being paid to comfort her. I sincerely wished that I could forgo that particular paycheck so I could tell Amy that I soothed her and stayed with her because there’s nowhere else I would’ve rather been, whether I was being paid for it or not. I desperately wanted her to know — to feel -- that she is inherently worthy of love and compassion, and it ripped me apart that she might never know that.
I started writing this story over four weeks ago and am only just now getting around to posting it because I don’t really know what else I want to say about it. This world is broken and sinful and far from what it was intended to be, and until the return of Perfection, there will continue to be suffering and loneliness regardless of our best efforts to prevent it. We can’t all be foster parents or adoptive parents, and yet, I feel a tremendous burden to share stories like Amy’s because on some very basic human level, isn’t Amy all of our responsibility? I don’t know what the solution is, and sadly, nearly ten years of experience in the child welfare field has only further muddled any ideas I may have had. My heart demands, though, that I contribute, however minutely, tangentially, or creatively, to the relief efforts... and I invite you to join me.
(Post-script: Mercifully, I learned several years ago that Amy was eventually adopted after I left the agency by a family who lives on a horse ranch. She was reportedly doing very well.)
Working rez is rubber-meets-the-road child welfare — the Marines of child welfare, if you will. We were trained how to defend ourselves physically and how to hold or “restrain” children when they became dangerous to either themselves or others (we used both sets of skills on a weekly, if not daily, basis). We learned and implemented lock-down procedures in the event of a riot. We dispensed alarming combinations of psychotropic medications to pint-sized humans up to three times per day. And amidst the defiance, aggression, destruction, and general chaos, we helped with homework, led activities, cooked and served dinner, and got 12 kids ready for bed and asleep.
The logistics of managing behaviors were a cake-walk, however, in comparison to the emotional challenge of working with such traumatized, damaged children. Reading these children’s files literally turned my stomach and lit an aimless rage within me at how such injustice could exist. I would play checkers with the kids or read them stories and try to imagine what their eyes have seen, what their ears have heard, and what terror and loneliness has filled their hearts. I would hold a child’s arm or legs in a 3-person restraint while he lay face down on the floor screaming and think, “What flashbacks is he experiencing right now? In how many ways are we re-traumatizing this child in our efforts to help him?” I was monitoring an 8-year-old girl in the locked safe room one evening and was desperately trying to motivate her to calm down so I could unlock the door and get her out of there. I went through my standard bag of tricks, to no avail, and then finally reminded her that it was bedtime and it would be no fun at all if she had to sleep in the safe room. She stopped her pacing and looked me directly in the eye through the window in the door and said, “I have slept and woken up in much worse places than this.”
Perhaps my worst night there, and certainly the one event that to this day cycles almost daily through my memory, involved a 10-year-old girl that I’ll call Amy. When Amy was barely old enough to walk, she swiped some LSD off of her parents’ coffee table and ingested it. I’m not sure how much she took or how long it was before her parents realized they’d better get her some medical attention, but in the end, the hard wiring in her brain was permanently damaged. She walked a bit like an ostrich, cautious and jerky, and she resembled an ostrich, too, with her perpetually wide eyes and wiry frame. Her ability to accurately interpret any sensory input was grossly altered such that she was always either totally tuned out to events occurring around her and lost in her own world or so overwhelmed with noises and lights and smells that she would begin screaming and thrashing. Unlike most of the other children, Amy was not oppositional or violent. But when she was in one of her fits, her body harnessed a strength beyond her size, and she could be every bit as unsafe or destructive as any of the other children. And given her mental and emotional disconnection from reality, it was seemingly impossible to process with her toward the goal of more constructive behavior. No one really knew what to do with her, which is why she came to us, but we didn’t really know what to do with her either.
After maybe one year of living at rez, Amy was stable enough for us to begin looking for adoptive homes for her. Her birth parents’ parental rights had been terminated by the court, so she was legally free to be adopted. We were thrilled to learn one day that a family was very interested in Amy and would be taking her to their home for the weekend to begin the transition process. For her protection, we did not tell Amy that this would be her “adoptive” family or her “forever” family, but despite her addled mental state, she got it. She literally skipped out the door, beaming, when the family arrived. Two days later, she returned with her arms full of gifts and back-to-back stories. She may have even referred to the parents as “mom” and “dad” once or twice. We shared her excitement and began preparing for her good-bye party (a very big deal in a rez program).
Imagine our shock several days later when we learned that after spending those two days with Amy, the family did not feel they could care for her after all. Her therapist broke the news to her, as gently as possible, and surprisingly, Amy did not become upset and simply continued with her daily routine as if there was never any family at all. But then the exact same scenario played out a second time. And, horrifically, a third time as well. Within about six months of the first family, two other families learned about her, invited her to their homes for the weekend, and then backed out immediately after.
I was working the night she got the news about the third family. She walked out of her therapist’s office with her face flushed, her eyes wet, and her hands clenched. We desperately wanted to avoid any restraints or seclusions for her that night, so I stuck by her side the entire evening, distracting her with conversation or activities when she began to get frustrated or overwhelmed. She made it the whole night until bedtime when she began to yell uncontrollably at another child for a reason I don’t remember. She would’ve attacked the child if another staff member hadn’t been between them to block Amy, and between the two of us, we simply corralled her into her room and shut the door before a restraint would become necessary. She screamed and thrashed and kicked for several minutes until she finally collapsed on the floor, sobbing, with her head bowed and her long auburn hair hiding her face. Alone with her at this time, I knelt down beside her and put my arm around her shoulders. She leaned into me as though her muscles could no longer support even her tiny frame and whispered, with a lucidity and honesty that haunts me to this day, “Kimberlee, I can’t do this anymore.” Oh, my heart ached. I didn’t know what I could do to comfort this hurting girl. I helped her into her bed, got her snuggled under her covers, and then rubbed her back and her face and her hands. Any sort of physical touching outside of restraints and side-hugs is strictly forbidden in a rez program because of the prevalence of past sexual abuse for most of the children; even the most innocuous touch runs the risk of being either stimulating or confusing to a child with such trauma. I can understand how, on paper, that is a wise policy, but can you imagine being ten-year-old Amy on that night having not been properly bear-hugged or physically soothed in over a year and a half? I’m not sure I gave it more than a fleeting thought; I just did it. I sat beside her and rubbed her back and sang to her like my mom used to do for me when I was little. Her muscles melted under the unfamiliar touch, and she eventually stopped crying. I stayed with her until she drifted off to sleep.
I wept for Amy the whole drive home that night. Sadness flooded my heart, but anger also boiled through my veins. I was furious at the obvious targets—her parents, the adoptive families, the stupid rez rules—but I was also oddly enraged that I was being paid to comfort her. I sincerely wished that I could forgo that particular paycheck so I could tell Amy that I soothed her and stayed with her because there’s nowhere else I would’ve rather been, whether I was being paid for it or not. I desperately wanted her to know — to feel -- that she is inherently worthy of love and compassion, and it ripped me apart that she might never know that.
I started writing this story over four weeks ago and am only just now getting around to posting it because I don’t really know what else I want to say about it. This world is broken and sinful and far from what it was intended to be, and until the return of Perfection, there will continue to be suffering and loneliness regardless of our best efforts to prevent it. We can’t all be foster parents or adoptive parents, and yet, I feel a tremendous burden to share stories like Amy’s because on some very basic human level, isn’t Amy all of our responsibility? I don’t know what the solution is, and sadly, nearly ten years of experience in the child welfare field has only further muddled any ideas I may have had. My heart demands, though, that I contribute, however minutely, tangentially, or creatively, to the relief efforts... and I invite you to join me.
(Post-script: Mercifully, I learned several years ago that Amy was eventually adopted after I left the agency by a family who lives on a horse ranch. She was reportedly doing very well.)
