amedeah's Diaryland Diary

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Stupid training

My first day working at Devereux with the kids was yesterday and I have to admit it was more than anything I was expecting.
We spent a whole week training for this job and on my very first day everything we were taught in the training has been put in question.
We were told a gazillion times that opposite sex staff were not to help our clients in any way when they were taking their showers, going to the bathroom, etc... I get to work yesterday and we are 6 girls on staff with one guy. Of course everybody is helping with shower time and I'm faced with getting 2 clients in and out of the shower. And then later on helping them with bathroom needs.
We were taught to call our program manager when this happened, to see if we could exchange staff with another program so that there would be male on male care etc..
My program manager was there the whole time in her office seemingly completely oblivious about the blatant disregard of rules.
Now I have absolutely no problem taking care of the clients when they are in the shower or if they need help with "accidents" but I would have liked some sort of head's up ! I got to work firmly believing that I would not be subjected to any of this, and that if I were I might get fired. It's extremely inconsiderate to us, as employees, to throw us into such a situation without at least taking us appart after the training and letting us know that although these are the regulations staff ratio at this point in time doesn't allow for these rules to work.
I am going to talk to the trainers we had and to the HR department. I might be the only employee that makes trouble like this, but I'm willing to risk it so that the company realizes how difficult it is to do a job we are not trained for.
Other than that problem, things went well. I mean there were a lot of temper tantrums and you cannot leave any of these kids alone for any amount of time, but I think I've already got a bond going with one or two in the bunch.

11:02 p.m. - 2006-01-18

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