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I am a mental health clinician and have spent several years working with mentally ill adolescents. There are times when these children lose control of their bodies and in spite of best efforts and least restrictive responses, they throw rocks, bite, throw desks over, and can pose hazards to the safety of people around them. There were times when we had an out of control youth and we required police intervention. I will tell you that the officers sent to our school demonstrated caring and restraint, and it's because they knew what they were dealing with when called to the school, and they are to be commended.

It seems to me that the solution can be found when people work together instead of blaming one another.

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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I have worked for a county funded program and wish to address the matter of what the County requires for the dollars it offers. This program is not the only program facing financial hardships. The ugly truth is that all social services are struggling. There is increasing competition for a finite number of dollars.

In addition, please note that what the funding sources require for these dollars keeps changing. I worked for a similar school which serves special needs children. In the five years I was there, our staff was given one pay raise. My caseload nearly doubled, and each time the various governing agencies did an audit, they increased the amount of paperwork required. Not only did I have to work with an increasing number of students, but I also had to complete twice the amount of paperwork for each student on my caseload.

The net result was that I had less time for students.

One more comment, and that is that the County and State have a focus on Evidence Based practices. Communities are required to prove that they are using a system of education/treatment which has research behind it. This means that innovative programs that have developed their own systems are now having to adopt different systems. If there were more wisdom among the bureaucrats and decision makers, they could have made life much more simple for everyone by considering practice based evidence - measuring the systems that already exist for efficiency.

I understand that public administrators need to provide oversight and accountability, but some of their demands on agencies are unreasonable. How many more agencies will be brought to their knees in the years to come?

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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