Volunteering at the Children's Justice Center

Volunteering at the Children's Justice Center has been wonderful so far. So many thoughts before my first day: who would I be talking with, would they be young or old, how would the parent(s) demeanor be, etc. My job is to simply "be" with whatever children come in to be interviewed. I am not allowed to ask how they are doing or any other questions that may lead them to divulge sensitive information. How are you is pretty much the first thing that always comes out of my mouth!!!! I was nervous! But the first day was great.

The first client was a young man, a junior in high school. He had brought a friend a long this morning. The parent went with the counseling group and I got to chat with the boys. I had wondered what we were going to talk about, if anything. My only knowledge is that something had been done to this young boy, and how would my knowledge of that affect my interaction with this boy. I found myself wanting to ask more personal questions, but unable to (by law) I tried to get to know them by having them share information about their interests. As we were talking about soccer and their dreams about the future, I was thinking in the back of my mind, how am I speaking and reacting to these boys....am I acting normal? Am I being discriminatory at all? And I pre-judging? And to my relief I found that I was speaking to them as I would any teenage boys, with no preconceptions, even though I was privy to a small amount of background information.

The second group to come in was a family of three young girls, all there to be interviewed for some incident(s). Mom and dad came too. My first thought was, if I saw these girls at an elementary school, I would have non idea that something had happened to them, so I should go about this as if I know nothing. And we played, we went outside to look at the giant ant hill, we chatted....it was much easier to speak with them when I wiped away any preconceived notions about their situation.

By volunteering here, I believe I will be reminded over and over that there is more to each individuals story then we see in our brief, and in some instances, even our extended interactions with people and friends.