Props for being a whistleblower; I respect the hell out of that. There will be no progress in society without people like you.
My question is what the procedure was if the facility were to catch on fire (assuming you were working out of a facility and not clients' homes, but correct me if I'm misunderstanding that)? I worked with a guy who had previously worked at an institution for the criminally insane, and he told me that they had no evacuation plan for the "residents" and that if there was a fire they were supposed to just leave and let them burn.
We worked in client's home, or on occasion, a group home. All our institutions were shut down in the late 80s because they were concentration-camp brutal. We did have evac plans, but whether or not they were followed depended on the people working there at the time of the emergency. Some people would run out the door and let the clients die. Others would risk their lives to save them. It never happened to me.
so from what i'm reading, it wasn't the exceptionals that were the problem, it was the agency
It was the state. The agency that oversaw us was woefully underfunded, and therefore so were we.
Did you have to deal with shit parents?
Yes. I had one mom who was pissed no matter what we did, and tried to tell us what to do. The director of our agency had to tell her she wasn't in charge, and to let us do our jobs. But most clients either had no family, or the family couldn't care less about them. I had to run off one mom who was stealing her son's SSI check to fund her heroin habit. I got yelled at for that, because we're supposed to involve the family. I stood by my actions, and my boss was "officially I can't condone what you did, unofficially if she shows up again, run her off again"
I'm so sorry you had to go through that. Nobody should have to hang around exceptionals for a living.
That said, if you have any particularly amusing stories you could tell I'd love to hear them.
Some were assholes. Some were nice people. Some weren't aware at all. One guy was faking. See below.
did you ever have to clean up potato shit or puke
I had to clean up both, but I didn't stop to analyze the contents of either. I followed precautions, but one coworker caught Hepatitis A from a client's shit. His fault though, he didn't wash his hands. He was a gross mf overall.
Stories:
I had one guy, we'll call him Robert, who I figured out wasn't developmentally disabled at all. He was batting with a normal IQ, he turned out to be a con artist committing social assistance fraud. He did things someone with an IQ below 70 simply couldn't. He ran off before he could be arrested. He also had about 12 kids, all by different women, and probably every STI known to science and probably a few that haven't been identified yet.
Many times, the staff was as exceptional as the clients. You pay 7.50 an hour, you don't get the cream of the crop. I had one coworker, Sara, who had a violent temper, and no work ethic. She liked to sit on the couch and text, and got annoyed when I asked her to do her job. One night, she got it into her head that we were all talking shit about her (the client complianed she left him in a dirty brief because she was busy texting and I corroborated his complaint to my boss). She got increasingly pissed off as the night progressed, and when we were putting the client to bed, he was being difficult because she was being mean. Finally, she lost it and started beating on him with closed fists. I grabbed her and pulled her off him, and she turned and started beating on me. Now, we're not allowed to hit the clients, even if they hit us. We had special techniques we were supposed to use but that's for another time. There is nothing in the rules that says we can't hit another staff member if they're wailing on us. Now, I'm just old-fasioned enough to think men shouldn't hit women, but when they're punching me in the face and trying to choke me, I throw that out the window. I blocked, then counter punched. We went at it for a bit, then she must have realized how much shit she was in, because she ran out the door and drove off. I called the cops, the state, and my boss in that order. She got picked up sometime later, and someone left a pair of boxing gloves for me when word got around. Yay. Amazingly, I didn't quit right then and there.
EDIT:
Have you used the tranquilizer gun?
No. A female staff member used a stun gun on the guy I mentioned who was faking being disabled. He tried to sexually assault her. His reaction to that is what tipped off the managment that he wasn't mentally disabled. I stopped a temper tantrum once by making a grilled cheese.
Why aren't you an alcoholic?
Joking aside, I figure with what you've said and others have mentioned turn over is high but how long did you do it and what was the rate you saw personally?
Also thank you for doing the right thing and trying to help. In cases like this it's sad when people are potato level IQ and there's no way to help them, it would be one thing if we had a system that got them to have a group home and stock shelves etc but they seem to just spend money into these programs and it all manages to go into thin air fucking the people like you, and those who are handicapped af.
I'm not an alcoholic because I already had a crippling addiction and didn't want another. We had people last less than a month. I did it for two years, two of the longest years of my life. After they retaliated for my whistleblowing, I officially quit and refused to go back in that field. I got out of social services entirely and went into IT.
here: Were any clients who were easy to care for and were sweet potatoes despite their condition?
