YOU DON't HAVE TO READ THIS ENTIRE THING..I know its long, but if you read the first two paragraphs at least, you will get the general idea of whats going on.
First let me give you a brief background on my job:
I work for a foster care agency who also has group homes for children that are wards of the state. I particularly work at one of these homes as a child care worker. I work with teenage boys who are all in high school and basically just am there to make sure they stay out of trouble, make them meals occasionally, and most importantly try to be a good role model and someone they can trust and look up to.
So, here is the situation. I was working with one of my co-workers a couple weeks ago and to make the long story short, I observed him showing a shotgun to a couple of the kids. He had it in his vehicle and was cocking it and showing them all the intricacies of it. A few minutes later, I felt compelled to call my manager (who also works at the house, but wasn't working that day). I told him what I saw and he said he would talk to the guy about it.
Now to backtrack a bit, this particular employee has had numerous accusations against him in the past 6 months he has been employed. Several of the kids I work with said that he had given them marijuana, alchohol, and porn magazines. This employee also admitted that he smoked marijuana while at work. He was also scolded for driving erratically with the company vehicle while the kids were inside it.
I feel that morally I need to take further action on this matter. My house manager wants to avoid conflict with this individual, but he has also let the directors (the directors of the group home program) know of these things. Although they have knowledge about the situation, they haven't taken much action on the matter. It is my firm belief that the company is struggling to retain employees and that they don't want to fire anybody, hence the reason for all this.
At this point, I've written an incident report about the situation, but have yet to turn it into the management. I know that by submitting it, they have to legally sign the document which would be proof that they had knowledge about these incidents and didn't take any action.
Above all else, I feel on behalf of the kids and myself, that safety and well-being is being ignored here.
So whats your take, any comments, suggestions, questions. I really need to get this taken care of. Thank you everyone!
UPDATE 2/15
So my manager just got back from vacation and I discussed the situation once again with him. He seems to understand where I'm coming from and said he will go into the upper management and talk to them again, mentioning everything that I told him. I'm going to follow up with him this afternoon and find out what they have to say. I'll do another update when I find out more.
First let me give you a brief background on my job:
I work for a foster care agency who also has group homes for children that are wards of the state. I particularly work at one of these homes as a child care worker. I work with teenage boys who are all in high school and basically just am there to make sure they stay out of trouble, make them meals occasionally, and most importantly try to be a good role model and someone they can trust and look up to.
So, here is the situation. I was working with one of my co-workers a couple weeks ago and to make the long story short, I observed him showing a shotgun to a couple of the kids. He had it in his vehicle and was cocking it and showing them all the intricacies of it. A few minutes later, I felt compelled to call my manager (who also works at the house, but wasn't working that day). I told him what I saw and he said he would talk to the guy about it.
Now to backtrack a bit, this particular employee has had numerous accusations against him in the past 6 months he has been employed. Several of the kids I work with said that he had given them marijuana, alchohol, and porn magazines. This employee also admitted that he smoked marijuana while at work. He was also scolded for driving erratically with the company vehicle while the kids were inside it.
I feel that morally I need to take further action on this matter. My house manager wants to avoid conflict with this individual, but he has also let the directors (the directors of the group home program) know of these things. Although they have knowledge about the situation, they haven't taken much action on the matter. It is my firm belief that the company is struggling to retain employees and that they don't want to fire anybody, hence the reason for all this.
At this point, I've written an incident report about the situation, but have yet to turn it into the management. I know that by submitting it, they have to legally sign the document which would be proof that they had knowledge about these incidents and didn't take any action.
Above all else, I feel on behalf of the kids and myself, that safety and well-being is being ignored here.
So whats your take, any comments, suggestions, questions. I really need to get this taken care of. Thank you everyone!
UPDATE 2/15
So my manager just got back from vacation and I discussed the situation once again with him. He seems to understand where I'm coming from and said he will go into the upper management and talk to them again, mentioning everything that I told him. I'm going to follow up with him this afternoon and find out what they have to say. I'll do another update when I find out more.
