Here I am again, it has been a little while since I came on here. I became very busy with my case managing job. I can not believe the heartache going home in many homes here in our country. I want to talk about a teenager in “the system” that was beautiful, smart, and had the same personality type on the Meyer Briggs Researched personality types as my little sister.
The first day I met this big eyed blonde hair teenager girl, she was sitting across from me and my supervisor in juvenile detention center. I had been in and out of the jail in my neighborhood because I had worked with programs that have to do with the jail. I was still nervous to meet her because despite teenagers being stereotyped as mean, she was supposedly very troubled.
However, right away I grew to like her. This little blonde girl was far from mean even though she liked to put on a mean persona. She was never mean to me. The day I met her she was wearing an gray jumper and jail flip flops. She was scared and frail. She had barely had any sleep and she looked desperate. I was sad for her right away.
I listened as my supervisor introduced me and asked her all about what was going on. I was shocked to hear she had been in a fight and that the other girl had started it. She had some bruises on her face. However the guards we had talked to i the waiting room had said she started it by “running her mouth.”
I could not help but think to myself, there is something wrong about putting a child here. She is not fully developed yet she is being herded together with more dangerous people and generally being unloved and unheard. Over the next few weeks she came into my care as a case manager. She laughed with me and told me about her family. I told her the hard truth and asked her to be good for her grandpa who she lived with.
She told me she was doing great at home and that she had learned her lesson and never wanted to go back to juvenile detention center again. I believed her. Her grandfather was happy she was out of jail and took care of her but he often was not home. He had to go buy large amounts of firewood to heat the house with a wood stove. The roof of the home had caved in when a bad storm blew in. It was barely livable in the home.
The little blonde girl looked pretty in her teenage clothes compared to the gray jumpsuit I met her in. I became close with her grandpa and her. I spent a few days every week helping her with school, helping her through probation, and supporting her in court appearances.
Then one day she became ill. Her grandfather also felt sick so I did not think much of it. I escorted her to a surprise drug screen on Friday where I gave her a speech about how great she was doing at home and in school. Saturday I was on my way through town with my husband when I received an emergency call from the little girls grandfather.
“The police came and took my granddaughter without telling me anything but that she failed a drug screen.”
I immediately went to the jail to find out what was going on. According to the officers in the jail, the little girl had failed the very dug screen that I had taken her to. I could not understand how she had been high on the way to the test. I realized right away that she had been faking me out the whole time.
I was sad for her again. I felt she was to young to deal with the downward spiral of addiction. In jail she told me she needed support and that she was really feeling down. However, my supervisor terminated her case immediately despite her needs. The little blonde girl was abandoned by the mental health professionals she needed and I had to make a disheartening visit to inform her that I would no longer be her case manager. She was so angry and sad.
I told the supervisor I felt it was wrong to stop helping her but she told me it was the wishes of the probation officer. I do not know where the girl is today because I no longer talk to her or have contact with her family. I hope she got her act together. I hope God protected her.
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