New: The Texas Juvenile Justice Department scrambled to keep itself afloat amid a staffing shortage this summer, primarily by raising officer salaries. But danger and trauma, not low salaries, are what drive most staff to leave the crisis-wracked agency.
sentenced to the youth prison system. The agency was hemorrhaging officers, and most of the new ones hired to staunch the bleeding were leaving within six months.
And agency reports through August showed the staffing losses did stabilize as more new hires were coming on with the higher pay. Butshow the agency in September still had less than half of its budgeted officer positions filled with active employees, as existing officers were still jumping ship. Caring for children in need is a core part of her identity. She and her husband fostered children for a dozen years, ultimately adopting two and raising them with their three biological children. And for nearly 14 years at Giddings, she felt she was making a difference in children’s lives, ultimately becoming a night shift administrator.
“This is not a bitter ex-employee. If things were still safe there, I’d still be there,” she told The Texas Tribune recently. “When it became dangerous for kids and dangerous for people who worked there, I had to let it go.” Blevins gave an example of one kid who peed on another teen’s clothing. Before the Texas Model, the offending teen would have been sent to isolated cells as punishment. Under the new approach, there would be discussions with the youth, and he would have to wash the soiled clothing.
Blevins said the training was not implemented uniformly, and it wasn’t made clear to employees why they were suddenly changing their approach to caring for youth. However well-intentioned, Blevins blames the new program and its disorganized implementation in short-staffed units for a loss of veteran officers at TJJD.
She is set for surgery soon, an experiment to see if a spinal cord stimulator will help ease her pain.
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