I work in a day program that runs out of my church. I've been there for three years, and during my first summer, I noticed that one of our volunteers becomes aggressive with a couple of our adults (stepping on toes when they aren't "quiet enough," pushing them, taking food away if they aren't eating as fast as he would like). I've reported it time and time again and a couple of weeks ago, my direct supervisor told me that "he's never actually hurt the adults, so it's okay." Last week, I escalated to her boss, the overall director of the ministry, who told me she's never heard that this is a problem. It feels like nobody cares about it happening but me and a couple other people. Additionally, today, one of our adults became extremely aggressive towards other participants in the program (grabbing them and staff, swinging bags around the room, running away). My boss wouldn't remove him from the situation and when my coworker and I tried to move the rest of the group into another room, our boss allowed the participant who was aggressive to follow us out there where he continued his behavior, directly putting the other adults at risk. To top it all off, ever since I had that conversation with my boss's boss last week, my boss has essentially been giving me the silent treatment (I'm 20 and she's 40 by the way. I just think that's wildly pathetic). The only time she speaks to me is if I give her information about our participants, such as noticing that memory loss has gotten worse for one that has developed early onset dementia, and it's just to blow me off by saying "you don't need to harp on everything that's wrong over and over again."
Having other adults in the program look me in the eye today and say "I'm scared" because we couldn't get the participant who was aggressive separated since my boss was unwilling to do the hard work to make that happen broke my heart. I don't even think that the participant who was grabbed by his peer's parents were notified. What I'm struggling with is the fact that I can't imagine staying in a program which doesn't seem to care about the safety of the adults we work with. But I love my participants. There's nothing that makes me happier than when I see them genuinely excited to see me and wanting to talk to me and share things about their lives. I'm worried that the program is going to quite simply implode before too long, and I'm worried if I leave I'll speed that process along. But I am already so anxious about going in on Thursday and I'm stuck on where I'm supposed to go from here.