Greater Western Kansas Regional Juvenile Detention Center

The Greater Western Kansas Regional Juvenile Detention Center is located in WaKeeney, KS approximately 300 Miles east of Denver, CO and 250 miles west of Kansas City, MO.  The area is rural with the major industry being agricultural business.

The campus consists of three buildings that house two separate programs.   The largest structure contains the detention center and houses up to 13 adolescents.  The remaining two buildings are large group homes and 14 youth can reside in each building.  The two group homes function as a secure placement for chronic runaways.

The detention center serves a 26 county region in northwest Kansas encompassing 22,000 square miles with an adolescent population of nearly 18,000.  The detention center also accepts placement of juvenile offenders from outside the service region and can serve as overflow placement for both southwest and south central Kansas.

The secure care center was established to answer the need for secure bed placement of youth that demonstrate an increased risk of runaway behavior.  In general, a youth detained in secure care is an adolescent female that has multiple runaway events and other non-secure placement attempts have failed.  The secure care center accepts placements of youth from around the state of Kansas.

Staffing

The center employs 50 people engaged in a variety of activities including direct youth care workers, support staff and administration.  Seventy five percent of the direct youth care staff have either obtained their undergraduate degrees or are enrolled at a near by state university.  Training and staff retention are priorities.   A team orientation is stressed such that each shift functions as a unit.   Training occurs twice per month.  Each staff member is assigned a topic area and they are expected to learn subject matter sufficiently to present it to other staff

Philosophy Of Operation & Programs

In order to maximize our impact we focus on establishing positive relationships between authority figures and the youth.  Without a positive relationship between staff and youth most of out efforts would be wasted.  We operate on three basic principles of interaction with incarcerated juveniles.  These principles are INCREASING SELF-ESTEEM, CHOICES, and SPACE.  Increasing self-esteem is accomplished by observing and stating to each juvenile every day something positive they have done, from the most minuscule action to clearly overt behavior.  We work diligently to provide youth with a number of choices throughout the day.  Choice empowers youth to be active and confident in making decisions that are good for them.   We also provide a lot of personal space.  On the whole, detained youth tend to over interpret any action as hostile.  Therefore, when a youth is acting out or verbalizing their frustration, we do not physically challenge then (e.g., standing too close, exhibiting body posture indicating readiness to respond physically).

Direct youth care staff are actively engaged in providing daily living skills (DLS) to the residents.  DLS emphasizes practical application of skills necessary for successful reintegration into larger society (e.g., budgeting, nutrition, interview skills, and leisure activities).  Each area of study is prefaced with a pre-test of knowledge and a post-test.  Typically, there are large positive gaps between pre and post-test scores indicating some learning is occurring.