rockergrrrl

so I get a phone call from my boss at 6pm on Monday. He's calling from his house. Thinking that it was strange and probably very important, I answer. I hear the most dreadful words one can imagine "Emergency staff meeting on Thursday". FANTASTIC! You see the agency I work for had 3 houses for our clients. In the last 3 years two of them have shut down due to financial troubles. Automatically the worry sets in when I get a phone call like that. I just got full time there and now am worried I may be losing my job altogether. I'm having a lot of other worries at the moment too, but I'll save that for a different blog. Monday night I proceed to get many phone calls from my co-workers freaking out. They think we're getting the axe too. Stress levels rising. I still tried to focus on the good that this meeting may be about but there wasn't many promising thoughts coming.

Meeting was today. Before the meeting even started the Executive Director mentioned to our coordinator that people will be coming by tomorrow to look at the properties. FUCK, we all heard what she said. We mouth to each other "we're done".

She starts "This isn't going to be good news, I got a letter Friday..."
Basically our funding got pulled. As a result of that, my agency is now forced to shut down. Our contract is done March 31st, 2009. However, we may be done WAY before that. The slight good news is that the people who fund us want to keep the house I work at open. They only want that part of the agency. There are other programs that are attached to the agency that are not going to be "saved"
How can "my" house survive if we have no agency you ask. It's a not-so-lovely matter of some other company coming by and absorbing us. While that doesn't sound too horrible, here are a few catches. A new agency means new clientele, a new program, and new rules. I may lose my 4 and half years of seniority and get placed elsewhere or lose my job altogether. Our wages may be getting cut DRASTICALLY(by 30% - 40%).Also, I more then likely I will have to perform restraints on these kids/teens (to see how I feel about that issue, check a few blogs back). The teens we have now, I don't know what is going to happen to them. It's not their fault, sure they have problems but really they are good hearted kids. We have a couple of them that have been with us for over a year.

Needless to say, not a happy day.
To think, this all started with a local municipal counsellor taking issue with "my" group home. Since it was in his neighbourhood, he lobbied against us.