Unmet expectations

Over developed sense of "rights"

As I live I shed useless traits slowly

This was my entry into the ZAADZ scholarship essay contest.  

      I am writing this essay as I ponder the conversation I had tonight with my new bride.  We were married on July 15th of this year and are really facing some of our first major decisions as a married couple.  We are both recovering drug addicts who came into sobriety as teens.  I have been clean and sober since 1996 and am currently 28 years old.  She is 24 years old and has been clean and sober since she turned 16. 

     For where we are as a married couple, we are both very grateful.  Our lives as individuals could have turned out much differently than they have.  I myself did not attend high school at all.  I made some attempts but never passed my freshman year due to the oppression of a methamphetamine addiction that had me beat.  At age 16 I threw in the towel and called it quits by taking my GED.  I passed it fairly easily as I have always been well above average intelligence, but it was really not worth much as I didn't have the resources externally as a foster child, or internally as an addict to continue on with any kind of serious career goals or educational goals.  I just seemed to go on toward a seemingly endless downward spiral.

       I eventually checked myself into a treatment facility and began my journey into recovery.  This all happened yesterday in my mind's eye.  It was a good step for me as prior to this, even with a high level of intelligence, I was severely lacking in any kind of life skills that could sustain me in the long term.  I was utterly unemployable and lacked any of the necessary discipline one must rely upon in order to become successful in today's society.  Poor kids do not get time to get it back together really.  We often have to louse it up financially and otherwise while we learn the lessons of youth without support. 

       Some of those lessons began to take hold thanks to the relationship I entered into with an old Social Worker named Oscar.  I called him OZ because at the time I lived in Kansas and it seemed like he was all knowing.  He had had been a lot like I was when he was young and he had made many of the mistakes I had made as a young man and as a boy.  He offered me endless amount of guidance and took enormous amounts of time out of his life to spend with me.  The relationship he and I formed really became the foundation for what my life is like today. 

      Oscar had been a counselor who worked with teens in years passed.  Although he had decided not to do this as a vocation anymore, he always told me awe inspiring stories of his days counseling teens.  These stories, meant to teach, resulted in much more than my learning how to live in the world.  As a storyteller, he not only became my guide in life, but became my muse, inspiring me to go on to do this kind of work myself.

       In trying to impart the essence and origination of my desire for education it has been important to describe how I became motivated to do the kind of work I have done.  It also directly affects my goals for the future.  I have been an adolescent substance abuse counselor now since I was 21 years old.  I am currently 28.  Recently I became a program manager for three programs that provide shelter and transitional housing services for homeless families.  This is a wonderful position for me but it is more directed toward my ultimate career goal of having my own substance abuse program for teens. 

       I live in San Diego County today and after working in the field of adolescent substance abuse under some of what I believe were the greatest supervisors in the world, I found that there are many, many kids just like I was who have not met their Oscar yet.  For many that I have met, I have been their Oscar.  Once getting involved in this type of work, I found passion I nary believed was possible for someone like me.  I had truly found my niche. 

       In San Diego County it takes three months for a teen who does not have health insurance or parents who can afford to pay cash to get him/her help to get into an inpatient treatment program.  Someday I would like to be the one who changes this.  For that to happen I have to reach certain licensure requirements such as those Oscar has.  My eventual goal is to become a Licensed Clinical Social Worker so that I can found and operate a program that caters to this neglected and underserved population. 

  

      I started this essay by mentioning my wife and discussing graduate programs earlier this evening.  I am nearly finished with my BS in Human Services with a Concentration in Community Youth Development and Leadership and we are facing the stark reality of the financial weight we will take onto our backs in order to accomplish this dream I have and that she shares.  We look at owing $90,000 between us and living with the salaries of Social Workers and wonder how we will do it. 

      Oscar flew out to San Diego in July to officiate our wedding.  He was our immediate choice as he was a spiritual guide to me and a person we felt our commitments to each other would mean the most were we to take them with him.  Our commitments made in his presence are the only ones that mean more than the commitment I have made to myself to freely give, what he freely gave to me when I was a suffering, throw-away kid.

  I serve on an advocacy committee that is developing a national certification, working to increase the availability of adolescent treatment services, and increased resource utilization for adolescent providers.  This is a brief essay I submitted to the other members of that committee through our online forum.

Cat Therapy/Assets

 

I couldn't help but notice the article already posted on Canine Therapy and felt compelled to relate an experience I had working with adolescent boys in a group home setting, residential AOD TX program.

The majority of the population in this particular program were court referred, gang involved, Latino males who lacked many of the resources that often times are needed for kids to obtain quality treatment.  In my experience, impoverished teens do not receive the same quality of services that middle and upper class teens do.

To combat the economic inequities, counselors, including myself, must be vigilant and more importantly creative.  I have a background in Community Youth Development so my mind tends to gravitate toward asset based programming.  In evaluating the assets of these young men, some basic capabilities came up when I heard about a shelter for cats in San Diego County. 

Friends of Cats is a "no kill" feline shelter that has literally hundreds of cats.  They operate using mostly a volunteer staff and do a very nice job of taking care of the animals they care for. 

So in viewing this through an asset utilization model, along with a touch of collaborative spirit, their minimal resources and our minimal resources combined to create a win/win situation.  In our program we had 6 boys who were struggling to learn how to be softer.  They had all been exposed to violence in the streets they had grown up in and some of them were even from opposing gangs within the program.  What these boys did have was the natural inclination to "touch furry things."  The majority of these kids needed a safe opportunity where they could allow each other to be soft.  I have found that in adolescent treatment, it is important to facilitate opportunities for the kids to give each other permission to let down their guard.

The kids initially fought the idea of going to the shelter.  It was a bit of a drive and it was to be their morning activity the day of family visitation.  Usually they would engage in some form of outdoor activity during this time.  Instead we made the trek to the shelter.

Upon arrival we had to sign in to the shelter.  The kids were somewhat resistant at first, but as soon as we got inside and they saw the hundreds of cats that were roaming free in this house the excitement and the "kid" within each of them began to appear.  The guard had already dropped and they couldn't wait to get in.  Fortunately, we didn't even have to announce ourselves as a program.  It may have been somewhat apparent to a wise eye, but I was young enough at the time to blend fairly well and I was enjoying the opportunity too. 

You see the shelter had so many cats that it needed volunteers to come in a pet them.  Animals need attention just as humans do and our kids were valued by their organization for being soft.  The kids actually received reinforcement from our staff, the shelter staff, and from each other for letting down their guard and being kids instead of being gangsters.  They were allowed to be loving.

I routinely worked the visitation shifts and always had my finger on the pulse of interaction during those days.  The release of family tensions that day was notable and the kids got to be kids with their parents.  It had been a long time for many of these families as they had been through significant juvenile justice proceedings, addictions, and other problems. Sometimes it is important for us to consider the assets of the young people we work with rather than the tattoos. The gang tattoo is part of the guard; a guard so frail a kitten can break through it with a rub and a purr.

Kansas Cafferty