YMCA aftercare

 

The staff Well....hard enough as it is to find safe aftercare for your child with special needs  once you find it all the bull "&!? Policies get in the way of human decency and common sense. 

I will write an update on Emmie in the next post but I needed to get this off my chest. 

The Pomelo YMCA #ymca is where Emmie has gone to aftercare for the last 3 years. At first she didn't have an aid. The staff picked her up from class and took care of her just like the other kids. They assigned one of their ppl to be with Emmie because she needs assistance opening her snacks & changing her pants if she has an accident. I picked em up early one day and saw that she was wet on her shirt. One of the kids heard me asking em why she was wet & said "ms Nikki poured water on her because she was being bad" The one person that was assigned to her broke her trust by belittling & embarrassing her in front of her peers

I told the manager and in the next few weeks ms Nikki 'resigned' as well as the manager who we loved. Something happened and the manager said she is quitting because she doesn't agree with Ymca policies. After that a new guy Christopher came in. All of a sudden Emmie wasn't allowed at the YMCA without a full time aid. AND they have nothing to do with hiring Aids...I had to do it myself and let him know.  My regional center coordinator said she'd never heard of this and we started a hunt for an aid. I had to pull em out & take work off for two weeks (WITH NO REFUND) while we searched. Good Aids are very hard to come by since it's such a low paying job and very hard to get by in la on minimum wage. After going through a few ppl we finally found one. Remember the YMCA is the only aftercare option at the school for kids under 2nd grade so we are at their mercy until we win the lotto and can quit work or make enough $ to hire a full time nanny. Phew I could breath knowing Emmie was safe until....

I received a call one day from emmies aid one day saying that Emmie was crying in the bathroom because she had wet pants and couldn't change herself. I needed to come help. ???? Apparently they have a new rule that the aid is not allowed to change Emmie & Christopher told my regional center coordinator that if she's not potty trained we need to talk about her being in the program. WHAT!? Why do we have an aid? Because the YMCA is to cheap to hire more staff? Because they are to scared to have a little human decency? Something else is going on here. 

 I went above Christopher to his boss Greg to explain the situation. I got the whole formal dance around about policies for MY CHILDS SAFETY. A joke really. I asked Greg how he would feel if he pooped in his pants and didn't know how to change himself and someone left him in a bathroom crying?! He explained he was "doing the best he could to figure something out". Apparently throughout all the YMCA programs in the whole country not one of them has had a child with special needs that needed assistance in the bathroom changing pants once in awhile. REALLY? Makes me think there's a whole world of parents out there that have had a similar experience to ours. So now I'm trying to figure out an alternate care option for Emmie. Do you know what it's like sending your child somewhere she's not wanted? She feels it too. Right now I just want to move our family off the grid somewhere so we don't have to deal with cruel ppl.