Thursday, June 29, 2006

There's Just So Many of Them and it's just So Hard

As you can tell, I’ve been trying to match kids and that involves me reading lost of narratives about children. I read them, and condense them into short paragraphs, trying to describe the child/children without going into too much detail.

I just finished a group that will be staffed next Wednesday: 15 year old Caucasian girl who has an eating disorder and who is diagnosed with schizophrenia; 16 and 14 year old African American siblings with multiple diagnosis, a 12 year old severely delayed AA boy who is functioning at a 1 year old level and has many medical issues, a 4 year old AA boy who has multiple medical issues, 13 and 8 year old boy/girl AA sibs with ODD, PTSD, etc., and 13 and 8 year old brothers. Many of these kids are in residential treatment and needing many services. Ten children and it will be a miracle of they have one home study to be submitted for any of them.

This is ONE week, in ONE city, in ONE state out of 50. Multiply that for many weeks in many cities in every state and that’s one of our nation’s biggest tragedies.

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