New Ideas Bubbling Up

Well one interesting thing that came up as part of the discussion about this job I can't have (that appears to have been worth about $25/hr, dammit!) was that the person who is feeling overwhelmed and wanted a break, Ill call him S, works full time during the week at a nearby prison. This happens to be the very prison that is high on my list of preferences for predoctoral internships. Kewl!

Because I work with Prop 21 kids (those being tried as adults for their crimes) and several have been sentenced just recently and shown a similar set of responses, I am thinking it might be interesting to do a dissertation surrounding this unique population. The initiative was passed in 2000 but took a long time to go into effect due to political battling over how to implement it, so it is a relatively new phenomenon. In past years there have been 2 or maybe 3 Prop 21 kids in our hall at any given time, but recently that jumped to 14! These are long term detainees for us, as it may take up to a year for their cases to be adjudicated (adult proceedings take longer than juvenile ones, it seems). Because most funding for mental health care (read Medicare) cuts off if you are incarcerated, there are no mental health services for these kids beyond crisis management. I've been a new element in all this because I provide a cost free way to give long term counseling to this population... or to anyone in the hall, actually. Now they are thinking of starting a program involving second year masters students and doctoral students to provide counseling. Kewl!!

Anyway, what came out of this thing about S, who works at the prison, is that he is doing these weekend shifts because he's interested in 'trying some new things' with youths who he thinks may be at risk of ending up seeing him at his 'day job.' I mentioned to the program director that S has been really helpful to the Prop 21 kids in helping them know what to realistically expect for their futures and I wished we could all be a little more educated in that area. The PM said he would try to arrange to have S, or someone else from the prison, do an inservice training about what to expect and how to help people facing or serving long term prison sentences. When I meet S I'm hoping to talk to him about whether I can work with him to turn one of his experiments into a dissertation, or if he would be interested in being on my committee if I decide to do something else on this topic.

One of the other people on the weekend rotation works at the J. Hall in the next county over during the week, so perhaps I could work with that person to include Prop 21 kids up there too, if they have any. Just ideas bubbling up through my little noggin...

Ok, so it's not money in my pocket, but at least it's something positive to be thinking about for a change! It's also a good excuse for not having done much on the lit review for the topic I had going. I'm thinking that if I was so uninspired that I didn't feel motivate to do the work, maybe I need to find a different topic.