Focus Group: Safety, Violence Prevention, Therapy and Mental Health

• Participants:
• Larry Kearns (WKA) (He / Him)
• Roy Ballestros (Anything Respectful)
• Clayton Blunk (He / Him / His)
• Diana (She / Her / Hers)
• Adriana Collis (on phone) (She / Her / Hers)

Education and Vocation Overview

Education and Vocation need at least two rooms for one to one conversations. We referred to these as huddle rooms. One huddle room will be used Vocational use. The other huddle room will be used for Education use for things like GED testing.

The Education Huddle room must be entered directly from the classroom so that students and teachers don’t need to go into a hallway. This will reserve the huddle room for educational use, which is critical.

Education exclusively uses personalized learning in the classroom. There’s no peer-to-peer education and rarely any small group instruction. There’ll be six to eight students in the classroom at one time, all learning different things at their own individual pace.

Classroom Use, Features

Clay is the primary teacher during the day, and Adriana covers the night sessions. Clay and Adriana’s office must be near the classroom. It’s also possible that Vocation and Education can share a single office if it’s large enough really to limit the disruptions, but that might be a bridge too far.

Most instruction is analog, although there needs to be six to eight computers in the classroom.

The classroom must be remote from the drop-in space (a floor or two away). Currently, there are too many interruptions with clients coming from the drop-in space to use computers for noneducational purposes.  For Education, retaining students is hard. If clients are distracted, they cannot focus. So, even having glass sidelights to the hallway is not desirable.

All the education BYC does is personalized. Each client will have a playlist of learning activities that they need to accomplish at their own pace. Clients must see the same educator week after week. Developing a relationship is critical for students following through. Scheduling can be completely flexible to accommodate students.

Educational services helps students fill out college applications and FASFA applications. This can occur in the classroom or a huddle room. Again, Chromebooks would be an advantage in this case,

Upstairs, it is also essential within the classroom area to have a color printer and a color copier in the room. This has been a struggle when those devices were unavailable.

Computer Lab Layout, Location, Equipment

The classroom needs to be a place of focus.  When a drop in client wants to use Facebook, they should do it near the drop-in space. Consequently, the computer room should be located on the same floor as drop-in. It should have 8 to 10 computers or Chromebooks.

Vocational Activities

Roy and Diana focus on Vocational activities. Roy and Diana currently share an office. But it is too small for both to work uninterrupted. We had a lot of discussions about different office arrangements.

As previously stated, one of the huddle rooms must be dedicated to Vocation, for things like mock interviews. When clients arrive late, its is critical that a huddle room be dedicated vocations so they can be accommodated. It’s vital for safety that these mock interviews and one-to-one meetings not occur in a private office or a shared office.

The huddle room should have a computer or a Chromebook. We discussed the possibility of Chromebooks, and staff is excited about the possibilities of being able to use mobile devices that have a seven or eight-hour battery life that clients can use. Clients can use these for learning, developing resumes, et cetera.

Within the Vocation programming room, it is important to have wireless technology for digital presentations, whether it be Apple TV or Chromecast.

The programming room that is located near the drop-in space will be used to teach life skills, etc.

Vocational Interviews 

Vocations staff also play a role in clients prepping for an employment interview. So for this reason, having a fitting room, close to vocations, offices, is important. Here, clients can get dressed and prep for an interview. For instance, Diana will purchase some clothes for a client. In the fitting room, they can be sure to feel comfortable in them. Some clothing can be remote in a retail-like environment that contains donated clothes. But Vocation must have a dedicated closet for work-related attire. The most prominent need are steel toe shoes, which are required for many of the jobs. This space does not need to be very large – 70 square feet should suffice.

The drop-in space at Wellington was a good size. There needs to be some division for the programming room, perhaps even a movable partition could work.

Volunteers / Growth

The current program does not allow for future growth. Staff is very concerned about this. There must be room to grow. This would not include volunteers. Adriana does not want to return to an education model that utilizes volunteers.

They must be interns that have experience as educators. BYC has a partnership with Heartland Alliance, and it’s possible that a Heartland employee could be co-located in the space.

Education and Vocation in The New Building

Diana likes very much the fact that BYC is integrated. She expressed concern with a client having to be told to go to the third floor if that’s where education lands. She is concerned that there’ll be a stigma about BYC becoming institutional.

Everyone felt that having a visual connection between floors in the new multistory building will be necessary. However, glass must be full-height in a multistory atrium. Railings are not safe.

Adriana is hopeful that the model they had at 3179 could work again. It had multiple floors where you walked up a stair to a second-floor reception area that had a waiting room. There Education and Vocation staff came to greet clients and escorted them to the classroom. This could be a great model to return to.

Staff are anxious about the growth of BYC and being separated on different floors. Roy thought, on the other hand, that some separation might actually improve client focus. Although the staff does see the benefit of going down to greet clients like they once did at 3157, there’s a concern that the walk could be too long to be practical.

Everybody loved the idea of daylight and windows, but visual privacy is a must. So if on the upper floors you can get a clear view of the sky, that’s great.

Safety and Other Concerns

Roy expressed concern about de-escalations in large spaces where many are congregating like the proposed drop-in space. He expressed concern about having too many people in a single space. At a minimum, BYC will need huddle rooms close by to allow clients in crisis some space.

It’s imperative not to have glass railings overlooking an atrium because of concerns for people injuring themselves.

We talked about how staff would communicate with one another in cases of crisis. Walkie-talkies were considered in the past and determined to be an inappropriate solution. Flashing lights can trigger some people. There needs to be a better solution for staff to communicate with each other when conflict occurs.

Clients have suffered trauma. We should employ best practices to make hyper-vigilant clients comfortable by providing them with defensible positions in a room (ie learning spaces where they’re looking out into the room instead of having their back to the room or door and so on).

There are cases when some clients can’t be in the same space with other individuals. Having some forenotice would allow staff to either escort one student out of a room before another entering. Or perhaps they could escort one client to a huddle room instead of the shared classroom.

Educational Presence in Drop In

Clay felt that BYC strength is in its closeness and that the rapport between staff members is great. Clay mentioned that it is also imperative that Education Vocation has a presence in the drop-in room.

Clay will frequently go there to play games with clients. Some clients will not reach out for help until the fourth or fifth meeting or weeks or months from a first introduction. Over time, clients can gain trust, and only then will they reach out.

But the classrooms and office need to be apart from the drop-in space. The drop-in space must accommodate both introverts and extroverts.

Rooftop

We talked about a rooftop as a desirable therapeutic space. Everybody loved that idea. Most thought that it could be used both by staff and clients. However, again, client safety is tantamount.

Peace Rooms

Diana talked about including a white room where people can have absolute privacy to yell as loud as they wanted too, to cry, or literally break things as a way of expressing emotion safely.