It is March and there is still snow around. Although the Mainers keep telling me this has been a mild winter, I still believe it is being too long for me, too snowy, too cold! It is time for Spring. And the true that the sunny days becomming more common, but it is still cold. As you can see in the pictures though, when the sun shines the days are gorgeous!
A part from that, we are already completly into the work programming and routine. We are already one staff member more and have learned very fast how to deal with everyhting so we can be a good help. The kids are really challenging as the behaviors, backgrounds and specail needs. A wide variety of clients and needs are met there and sometimes is diffcult to individualize as much as it is needed. This is the reason because there is that many staff in this School. There is an average of 5 staff for 6 clients. Lots of theses cleints needs one to one attention.
The training the company provided us before starting our job was very useful. The main part of the training was the part dedicated to the Therapeutic Crisis Intervention. The TCI is an approach of the intervention of the educators when the child is in crisis. This approach is very extended and common in the United States. It takes into account all the little pieces and steps an educator can do and take in order to reduce a stressful situation for a kid that could potentially end in a crisis. The TCI also train the workers the physical strategies that need to be used in case that the situation becomes unsafe for the client, the worker, or both. This is something that mkes me thing a lot...
Why in Europe we don't have this kind of technicques? Do we need them? Can the use of theses techniques make the kids dependant to them? It is ok to expect from an educator to be able to physically distress an unsafe situation?
As we say, "mañana más", which means "Tomorrow there'll be more"
