Bad Bad Teacher

In general, Kidspeace is an excellent facility and delivers superior results for it’s clients. However, as goes any detention-like facility, there are the obvious pitfalls behind the curtains. I’m sad to see that they have closed the admissions, and I wonder if that’s for the entire chain of Kidspeace locations in PA, or just for the school. I’ve seen Kidspeace do quite a lot for a lot of people.

Personally, I’ve seen staff resolve the worst situations with extreme professionalism. However I’ve also seen other staff provoke clients that they simply don’t like, into a fistfight with them- only to call their fellow staffers to assault and beat the kid senseless. I know staff who advocate for kids, like Marcellus, supervisor for Kink House unit in Patriot Center on the Orchard Hills campus. He’s handled every situation he’s came across with supreme efficiency and he made a difference in a lot of kids’ lives. As well as me.

However, there are other staff I’ll leave unnamed- who have constantly provoked and beaten kids to a punch-drunk state. You learn to drown out the screams of your peers- whom their voices you fully recognize- and continue doing as you were. This is a daily thing. You peer out of your doorway and see the blue mats used not at a restraint cushion- but as a visibility restriction device, so there’s no witnesses. Once in a while you can pass by there to see your friend staring up at you, halfway unconscious, with blood leaking out of his mouth.

This is something you’d expect from prison C.O.’s, not youth counselors. The problem is not the staff who beat the kids, because that itself is a side effect of the real concern at hand- the incident reports being ignored. The way it works in there is if you have an incident or a problem you would like to report to higher management, you must file it through your unit staff, who deliver the report to their higher-ups. Usually, there are one or two higher-ups per center. (A center consists of 5 units, each holding approximately 15 – 20 clients). The problem with this is that the staff learn to become close with the higher-ups, thus inducing the “have your back” effect.

If there was no such thing as the Internal Affairs Bureau, corrupt cops would have to answer to their supervisor. Again, creating the exact same effect of friendly protection. What may be an excellent idea to rid this facility of such incidents going unnoticed until (as in this case) external parties are contacted, is to devise an entirely separate board of Kidspeace staff, who are trained in these kinds of issues. Maybe ex-cops, whoever they feel the need to round up, and can demonstrate their skill for the job.

Either way, this problem needs to be solved. Throughout the youth detention system, this is definitely the biggest problem the industry faces.

Kidspeace is a very successful chain of youth help centers all across the United States, and I personally have had a sit-down with the Vice President of the Kidspeace company, before she resigned a few months ago. I sincerely doubt that this incident will even slightly phase the progress of this excellent facility, however without the corruption problem being taken into consideration, it threatens to damage the very core of this whole company.

Selah,
- “The Tooth”.