What's up ladies and gentlemen boys and girls around the world I'd like to welcome you back to the real talk with Zubi podcast now on today's episode

we are going to be talking to a counselor and this is Monica Dunlap welcome to the show. Thanks for having me it's an honor. No doubt so I've done a super brief intro right there Monica but please tell people a little bit more about who you are and what you do.

Yeah so I'm a licensed professional counselor I work in private practice right now I have a history in both drug and alcohol rehabs and working with youth that have been in trouble with the law or you know children youth things like that.

I hear that how did you get into this field so I was in a lot of trouble as a kid I was in juvenile detention centers I was in group homes things like that and when I went to school I had no clue what I was doing and I took a psychology class and it just kind of made sense everything that I had been through I understood.

I wanted to know what children were going through that are in these situations and I just wanted to help and just kind of led me down that path.

I hear that can you tell me a little bit more about your childhood and growing up because I'm always curious to know how people got to where they are and what they're doing now as much as you're of course willing and comfortable to share.

Yeah so I mean pretty normal childhood until I was I'd say about 13 and my grades started to slip I started to have a lot of issues with my parents and there was a lot going on I don't want to get too deep into it.

But children youth were involved with my family and eventually ended up taking me out of my home and putting me into again juvenile detention centers group homes lockdown facilities a whole host of places for about two years.

And how did that how did that come about was that from an outside organization or was that from the family side.

So it's a little hazy kind of when that stuff happens kind of block it out in my particular situation children and youth came into my home and there was you know leading up to this there is a lot of issues with.

Custody and things like that and children youth came into my home and i'm not sure why they were there on that particular day but.

They ended up pressing charges against me because the children youth worker was like in my face later hands on me and I pushed her away and I think we'll talk about this more this happens to kids a lot but that was kind of their excuse to press charges give me a felony put me in a detention center and then.

So it's different in different states they call it different things it's the system basically so it's usually people are more familiar with the foster care system but the system is not just foster care they also.

So basically it's when the parents give up their rights or the rights are taken they're put in the children and youth system does that make sense okay it's so okay got it so that's like a government.

Organization or group that handles that at a state level something like that yes yes exactly got it got it and when you talk about lockdown facilities what is that what does that mean i'm not even super familiar with the term.

Yes so it varies it's been in the news a lot lately because Paris Hilton has started to speak out about the abuse that goes on in these places and the lack of any sort of actual help for children so.

So there's a few different types of facilities i'll just speak about you know what i'm familiar with so the place i was at the first place was a detention center which is locked down no sunlight no outside like it's jail it was in the first floor of adult jail and it's the same thing as jail and then from there there's different facilities such as.

Residential treatment facilities wilderness programs things like that it's basically called the trouble teen industry so it can range anywhere from a kid having a mild issue such as truancy bad grades.

Or anything to you know stealing a car things like that parents.

Can send their kids to these places themselves without children youth involvement for things like coming out of homosexual being sexually active not agreeing with their parents religion things like that because ultimately parents have autonomy to send their kids anywhere that they choose.

Yeah so the way i mean i think it's good for the listeners to know the way this podcast came about was i was talking about who i should speak to on my podcast and you said that you'd like to talk about the trouble teen industry and that was a term that was a term i'd never even heard of before until you mentioned it i'd never even heard that phrase and i was like what's the what's that about and you sent me a dm sent me some links and some info and i was like oh wow this is something that.

If i'm not aware of it there must be millions of millions of people out there who aren't aware of it at all so how many children are even in these facilities these different types of facilities how big is the scale of this so annually there's.

...