Busy Buddy's Back

That's right. We have another relapse victim. And it's not all roses and puppies this time. Apparantly Ken has been beating on his wife and eldest daughter. I believe they are in the midst of getting a divorce. Besides seeing this information in his file, Ken himself does not seem very different. He's still relatively happy and sociable, as he's always been. He has kept his distance from me a little more this first day he's been back, but that could just be the marijuana working out of his system. He confessed to me that he'd smoked a joint the night before while staying at an acquaintance's home. As of now, he's technically homeless. No one in his family will take him in, so he's been living with near-strangers since he relapsed.

He's got three kids, a wife (who's also in treatment), and since he's not even old enough to buy beer yet, I think that he's done a lot so far and it sucks that he's throwing it all away over drugs / his disease has gotten to this point.

Another tasty slice of pie in this equation is that Gordina, his wife's sister, has also come into the same treatment facility. She recognized him and told me all about the domestic violence that I'd read about. She said that she too was being physically abused by her husband, but she was in the midst of divorcing him. It sounds to me like some family sessions need to be held. But I'm not out of grad school yet, so my opinion doesn't really count now does it?

I don't know how having two people on opposite ends of the same bad situation is going to play out the rest of this week at work, but I hope it doesn't get too crazy. Two people quit this week, and now I and the remaining techs have to pick up the slack (we only have somewhere around nine people left to supervise over 30 inpatient clients 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and let's not forget that Christmas and New Year's Day are coming up).

One notion I want to address for a second is the idea of me being a 'buddy' to a domestic violence perpetrator. I am not here to judge anyone. It's not my place. All I am present to do is help Ken with his drug problem. The hope is that getting him sober will take care of all the other problems that he's having in his life. I don't want him to be a danger to himself and his family, so I want him in places where he can get the help that he needs. I'm not going to give up on him just because he's doing something I don't agree with. That would be very un-social worker-esque (yes, I made that up all by myself).