Tender Mercies and PSR

TENDER MERCIES

When we moved back to Rexburg in 2013, I was worried about finding a good job. I knew I could get on the sub list and be a substitute teacher, but I was worried I wasn't going to get enough work to pay the bills while Jer finished his last year of school. Jer was looking at Craigslist on Wednesday night and saw an available job that seemed like something I could do. It required a degree (check), a reliable car (check) task oriented (check) and work well with people (check). Seemed simple enough. I replied, sent in my resume. The next day (Thursday), we made the drive back down to Rexburg, and when we got into town, I received a call to come an interview for the job, the next morning. SO- Friday morning I head over, nail the interview, and I started on Monday January 7th.

PSR

I really didn't know what a "PSR specialist" was, but I soon found out...
PSR stands for PsychoSocial Rehabilitation. It is someone who works with counselors and therapists, so people who need more than one session a week. A PSR worker, is basically a glorified baby sitter and teacher and social worker all at the same time. You carry out designed plans and interventions with clients, based off of their PSR plans that their counselor writes. The interventions are broken down into 2 sections: Community Reintegration and Skill Training.
Community reintegration is all about guiding the client to practice the skills their PSRW teaches to them during the skill training portion. You can only bill while you are with a client, so say you have 5 clients who all meet with you 5 hours a week, then you get paid for 35 hours that week- That is only if you clients do not bail on you- and when you are working in this field, there are MANY MANY FLAKY people who bail on you- So it is difficult to get lots of hours in.

TRUE QUALITIES OF A PSRW

For each hour that you met with a client, you need to write a note about it, in order to make it billable-since these sessions are usually paid for by the state you are working in/MEDICAID. Therefore, if you have 40 hours/week of clients, you will be writing 40 notes, each hour needs a minimum of 8 sentences in the note= LOTS OF PAPERWORK=sore fingers=lots to print each week=lots to sign=staying on top of the paperwork.
Teaching: You are teaching these kids skills necessary to be able to function normally in the real world- skills which they either haven't learned in the home, or ones they have troubles with because of past trauma or disabilities that they are working through. You need to plan out activities that will help teach you client different skills. For example: The client has trouble concentrating for more than 2 minutes because of ADD, so you set up a reward and work on a puzzle until it's done without getting distracted. There are thousands of skills (actually 25 of them) but they can all be taught in many ways, and that's where you get to be creative about your lesson plans. Pinterest helps too!
Next is being able to schedule all your clients in around your own schedule, life and meetings, and then correlating your clients times of availability with others whom you work with- If I have 6 clients, I need to ensure I get all the hours in and be prompt about when I'm picking them up and dropping them off.
Then it is all the driving: You are driving to a clients house/school or where ever you are picking them up- getting them, going to where ever you are having the intervention, taking them back home in time to be able to drive to your next client and do it all over again. You usually don't have all your clients in the same town so LOTS of driving time and mileage.
Dealing with your clients: now I only worked with girls, ages 4-21. They come from usually broken homes, abusive relationships and zero stability- these people need stability and want someone in their lives whom they can trust and will be there for them no matter what. BUT they usually always slip up and bail on you... you have to be patient, and try not worry about the hours and paychecks, but the people-the real life people who NEED you.

Through my time as a PSRW (7 months) I drove millions of miles, wrote out and signed thousands of paperwork, attended hundreds of meetings, and got annoyed with clients 1650,000,000 times BUT, I think I really helped and made a difference in at least 7 people's lives, and that is so worth it to me.

All in all, every person on this earth is a son/daughter of the same Heavenly Father. People struggle with their own things and who are we to judge. I've worked with sexual, emotional and physically abused kids, kids with ADD, PTSD and every acronym under the sun, teens who are in and out of jail, addicts of all kinds, and kids with learning disabilities. I loved every one of them, as crazy as they made me! It was a hard job to adjust to and it was hard to figure out how to deal with my clients and their emotions, and also to be professional and separate my own opinions and emotions, but I figured it out, and got great feedback from my employers and parents/guardians of the girls I worked with, leaving it to be one of the most challenging and rewarding things I have ever done in my life :)