Fornits
Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform => The Troubled Teen Industry => Topic started by: Anonymous on December 03, 2009, 12:34:51 AM
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I am offering another chance for people to ask questions about Camp E-Hun-Tee, an Eckerd Youth Alternatives wilderness camp. Please feel free to ask questions. This opportunity, in my humble opinion, is rare. However, I could be wrong.
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I am offering another chance for people to ask questions about Camp E-Hun-Tee, an Eckerd Youth Alternatives wilderness camp. Please feel free to ask questions. This opportunity, in my humble opinion, is rare. However, I could be wrong.
You might consider asking in the facilities questions and answers forum which is moderated. As far as questions go, i'm not sure where to start. Let's start with the program structure. Was it a level system? What were the rules like per-level?
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There were no levels when I worked there. The rules is a good question. Each child was expected to keep his personal space clean, dress neatly, use appropriate language, stay with the group, participate in activities, treat other children/teachers with respect and complete daily chores.
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The above response was mine.
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• What kinds of activities, groups etc. were part of the daily routine there?
• What were their requirements of potential hires (Education/training etc.)?
• What if any additional of training did you receive?
• What was your reason for leaving?
• What is your overall impression of the camp?
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• What if any particular type (age , gender ,labels etc.) of child was enrolled in their program?
• What type of therapeutic or medical treatment (if any) did the program sell?
• What are your impressions of staff and management?
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Daily Routine for the Florida Camp, E-Kill-A-Kid
6.30 Chief (counselor) wakes up to prepare for the day. During this time the Chief goes around, unlocks the toolboxes, sets out the cleaning materials, and checks on the bedwetters. If a kid did pee in his bed the Chief will wake him up early to make sure his sheets and blankets get bagged up in a biohazard bag to be taken down to the laundry room for washing.
(the camp in florida generally has one of the cook do all the washing of clothes and sheets and so forth)
7.00 The kids are woken up and they are given 20 minutes to get dressed, get their beds made, square away their foot lockers, straigthen their personal area, sweep out their tents, and police around them for trash.
7.20 Back to crappers. The florida health department required all the camps in florida to install plumbing for the toilets to prevent e-coli poisoning. Probably not a bad idea considering the whole business with E-coli at PV. A team of boys, changes on a regular basis, will empty the urine buckets into the toilets, scrub out the toilet stalls, and mop them out.
(urine buckets: each tent has a bucket for the kids to piss in at night. It sits out from of the tent and they merely step out and drain the snake when they have to go.)
7.30 Nightly Site: The coals and ashes from the previous night's fire are collected from the fire pit. In the group of Chawkebans we used five masonry blocks to make this pimp looking pentagon thing. I never did tell anyone it had more to do with a passing fancy of mine involving wicca than anything else. None the less they collect the coals, and build a new nightly fire out of pieces of wood that are cut and prepared each day. During this the rest of the boys set their daily goals. These are supposed to be meaningful, accomplishable, and desirable. However, this generally means they mumble some shit to get their day over with.
7.35: Front Chores: The kids troop it to the front of our campsite and do our front area chores. I won't go through them all but essentially they clean the kerosene night light, fill the trail lamps with kerosene, sweep out the buildings, prepare more wood for the nightly fire, and a few other things.
7.45 to 7.50: Go down to the Chuckwagon to set the table for breakfast. During the walk down the trail the group will stay close and be motivated. To be motivated they'll sing trail chants to announce to the rest of the camp that they are on time and ready for their day.
8:00: The table setters go in and set the table.
8:15: Breakfast, served by the chief in a family style dining arrangement. The groups are not allowed to interact so no point in buffet style cooking.
8:45 Breakfast Table is cleared by table setters, the boys, counselors, and whoever else is around use the song books provided to each group to sing songs. The theory was to keep the boys occupied so they aren't causing trouble.
9:00 to 10:00 Chuckwagon and Doing the Board: Chuckwagon is an afterbreakfast educational session put on by one of the Resource teachers, Doing the board is simply where each group tells a Master Counselor what they are doing for the morning.
10:00 to 11:45: Morning activities.. This can be campsite tent building.. campsite projects.. going to the ceramics and woodshop.. Library time.. doing menus and/or daily plans.. all sorts of things...
12.00 to 1.00: Same as breakfast, with the exception that the educational activity is shorter.
1:30 to 2:30: Siesta.. boys are allowed to sit or lay in their beds. They can read, write, or sleep. They can not talk to each other at all. Sometimes the resource teacher comes around and does learning logs.. this is where the kids who want to catch up on their studies go to the Chuckwagon tent (the campsite dining hall.. think big assed tent with dinner table in it) and do some study time with the resource teacher.
2:30 to 5.00 afternoon projects, showers, and games.
5:00 to 7:00 repeat of breakfast and lunch, with a longer chuckwagon that is put on by a counselor.
7.00 to 9:00 The boys go back to campsite, eat snack, use the toilet, have their nightly pow wow (go to the nightly site, start the fire, evaluate goals and do the serenity prayer), and after all of this the smart chief would hustle everyone to their tents. During this time the chief does a last med call where he/she hands out any OTC meds that the kids might need (rash ointment... etc.)
Now.. keep in mind that before and after every single activity the group does a huddle. They evaluate the activity by saying one thing that went well and one thing they can improve on. This is for everything.. walking to the dining hall... everything.
I'm curious to see how this schedule differs from E-Hunt-Tee schedule.
2.30 to 4.30 Afternoon projects.. same sort of thing as the morning.
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Oh yeah.. This is a normal day.. The days we ate on campsite and cooked our own food were a bit different. Campsite days were Wednesday and Thursday, which was a blessing as if a problem broke out the front office normally had someone around to help out.
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Vile dirty Asian Ladyboy Lover, questions, more questions, and carson mccullers are aliases for one person I know This is a good laugh.
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Vile dirty Asian Ladyboy Lover, questions, more questions, Damn Dirty Negro and carson mccullers are aliases for one person. This is a good laugh.
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The schedule is more or less the same. "Cookouts" were on weekends when I first arrived at Camp E-Hun-Tee. The "cookout" days were changed to Wednesday and Thursday. There are only so many words I can pull out of my vocabulary to describe how awful the management was.
There were other rules I did not mention earlier. They were no smoking, no drugs, no alcohol and no fighting.
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Nah, questions, more questions, and Carson Mccaullers are other people.
I don't think Eckerd's sold treatment.. but I could be confused by the question. Could the person who asked the question elaborate on it with an example?
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There are only so many words I can pull out of my vocabulary to describe how awful the management was.
Can you try?
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I don't think Eckerd's sold treatment.. but I could be confused by the question. Could the person who asked the question elaborate on it with an example?
• What was the pitch to parents?
• If this camp is “sold” as different than summer camps, what are the differences
• Is this camp more like the one from Meatballs, Friday the 13TH or the one from Adams Family Values? Please, describe…
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...and I'm not a lady. I'm not a ladyboy. I'm not into ladyboys like that, but whatever...and my questions are for Joel.
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There are only so many words I can pull out of my vocabulary to describe how awful the management was.
Can you try?
There are a couple of examples I thought of.
1. The children ate in "chuck wagon" otherwise known as dining hall. My program director restrained another child inside chuck wagon during lunch. This took place in front of four groups. My program director, in my humble opinion, could have restrained him elsewhere. I understand why restraints take place but the timing/location of the aforesaid mentioned restraint was suspect.
2. The was a riot at Camp E-Hun-Tee when a group from TN [I think] that was visiting. There were four children from the Abnaki group who threw gang signs. The signs were directed at the visiting group from TN. Problems erupted shortly thereafter. To make a long story short, staff members moved every every remaining Camp E-Hun-Tee child [there was a group that managed to walk back to their campsite unscathed] into the chuck wagon. They did this because children from the visiting group were throwing big rocks at the dining hall, including the front office. I prevented one Camp E-Hun-Tee child from walking out of chuck wagon to fight with the visiting group from TN. Whereas I was nearly hit in the head with a shovel. The shovel missed the back of my head by an inch. Management were forced to call in the RI State Police. There were nobody charged and sent to juvenile detention. My Program Director made that choice because everyone involved would be charged, then sent to juvenile detention. If the visiting group was charged, sent to juvenile detention, their Camp Director would have to travel from TN to bail them out in RI. This was another reason my Program Director did not press charges.
3. There was a kid named Vinny who was in the youngest group. He got under allot of people's skin. My Program Director grabbed him by the collar and shook Vinny two times. This took place in campsite and during a van ride back from Florida.
4. The upper management did not provide sufficient training. There was rarely anything accomplished during staff meetings which would have been a good opportunity for training.
5. The upper management put new chiefs [group counselors] in group alone. This was a recipe for disaster. The children knew they could eat new counselors alive.
6. I saw my camp director and program director "escort" another child. One grabbed the other by the arms, the other by the legs. Off they went.
7. I saw my program director chasing after another child in front of chuck wagon. He was pissed off because the child did something to offend my program director. There were other employees who prevented my program director from pursuing the child.
8. I saw my program director chasing after another child in my campsite at night. He was trying to restrain him. The problem could have been handled more effectively. People who work/worked in wilderness camps understand creating problems at night was not good. There were other group counselors who would keep groups up until 1-2 in the morning until the problem "was solved." Children were cranky the next day and more problems/restraints took place.
9. Bear in mind there were company policies and there were unwritten rules. Upper management could get away with stuff ordinary group counselors could not. They restrained children the old fashion way and made a habit of it. There were "off the book" restraints upper management could get away with. For example, a Program Director In Training would bear hug another child and slam him on his ass.
10. Upper management could have been more selective with children they accepted. A majority of children were violent. This did not work well because Camp E-Hun-Tee was under staffed.
11. There were so many burnt out staff at Camp E-Hun-Tee. I approached my Program Director and spoke with him about a 4-3 schedule to reduce the burn out factor. He laughed at the idea. I also spoke to him about adding more counselors in groups but there was a reason few chiefs worked at Camp E-Hun-Tee. RI was extremely cold during the winter and the camp was the biggest shit hole wilderness camp in Eckerd Youth Alternatives.
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12. Upper management was not keen on pulling a child out of group to prevent restraints. There were several chiefs who didn't like upper management pulling a child out of group to prevent restraints. The upper management wanted chiefs to run group on their own and basically keep upper management/master counselors out of group affairs. This was good in theory but it backfired frequently. What is the harm if upper management prevents a restraint?
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Whereas I was nearly hit in the head with a shovel. The shovel missed the back of my head by an inch.
Damn... so close.
I wish he wouldn't have missed.
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Whereas I was nearly hit in the head with a shovel. The shovel missed the back of my head by an inch.
Damn... so close.
I wish he wouldn't have missed.
Thats because Joel told it the way it is and you cant handle personal accounts which are straight up honest. You were hoping for more exagerated stories of abuse and neglect.
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Please ignore people who write "Damn... so close. I wish he wouldn't have missed" or any comments intended to disrupt this thread.
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Please ignore Joel's miserable self-serving account of events in which he names absolutely no names and blames everyone else, not mentioning a single thing he may have done.
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Please ignore Joel's miserable self-serving account of events in which he names absolutely no names and blames everyone else, not mentioning a single thing he may have done.
Yes, Joel should take a page from of our survivor stories where we openly take on some of the blame ourselves and tell people our screw-ups that caused us to be placed. We never blame anyone else or play the victim here.
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I don't think Eckerd's sold treatment.. but I could be confused by the question. Could the person who asked the question elaborate on it with an example?
• What was the pitch to parents?
• If this camp is “sold” as different than summer camps, what are the differences
• Is this camp more like the one from Meatballs, Friday the 13TH or the one from Adams Family Values? Please, describe…
Both E-Hun-Tee in Rhode Island and E-Kill-A-Kid in Florida along with most of the rest of Eckerd's camps are state contract facilities. This means they don't really have to pitch anything to the parents. Most of the kids are sent by a judge. Now and then in Florida I saw the occasional Seminole kid or private pay kid, not sure what they told the parents, but often the parents would get a chance to meet with a group. They would go up to campsite, sit with the group and the counselor, ask questions, and see what the campsite is like.
Most of the time we never saw those parents or kids again. Not sure what they do to spin the program in other camps that are purely private pay facilities. But I'm pretty certain no one ever made the attempt to spin it as a summer camp.