I'm not speaking officially here, but...
LEARN TO MATH!
It is actually not at all unreasonable for there to be two staff members employed for every youth placed in a JJ facility, Residential Treatment Center, or what-have-you. In fact, I'd argue that this is low. What follows is going to be an explanation that is fairly in-depth and technical, yet oversimplified at some points.
You see, residential settings of whatever sort require 24/7 coverage. If you assume that nobody takes time off ever, that means just over 4 FTEs are required to have one person per shift. Given vacation, sick leave, mandatory training, the requirement to have a bit of transition so that you don't just have one person literally passing a log book to another and walking out, etc...realistically, to have 24-hour coverage by one person requires somewhere around 5 to 5.5 FTEs.
The least intensive accepted overall staffing ratio is 1 direct care staff:8 youth in care. And that's for the kids who have no more than "moderate" difficulties in a single dimension of impairment, or "mild" in more than one. You're NOT going to be doing that in a JJ facility. After all, they're there because they violated the law - for the sake of example, I'll call them "severe" on behavior, which by our current guidelines calls for a 1:5 staff-to-youth ratio. (I could argue that youth in state-run facilities are by definition "hard to place", which would change this to a 1:3 ratio, but I'll use the 1:5 for now.)
A common model for state-run juvenile facilities is the 24-bed or 25-bed facility with on-grounds school. The general math is close enough either way that things wouldn't just utterly fall apart. If you did nothing but provide direct care services - nothing at all - then given that you need about 5 FTEs for a single worker to provide 24/7 coverage, and you have a 1:5 staffing ratio at any given period, then at this ratio you've got to have 25 direct care workers for 24 or 25 kids - approximately one employee per youth served.
But wait! Supervisory staff are required for various reasons - there are some things that are not supposed to be done by entry-level direct care staff, and there should be supervision just in general. A standard we use is one supervisor for eight direct care workers - so in this model we'd need three supervisors. Three supervisors won't provide true 24/7 coverage, but it's probably OK to do some of this via on-call coverage. Call it four FTE once all the rotating on-call stuff is handled.
But wait! Kids are in school during the day, right? Well, not always (they can get sick or refuse to move or there can be some other issue), so there still needs to be some degree of regular direct care staff available while the kids are in school. Maybe one or two instead of five, on the day shift. Instead of direct care staff, you've probably got classroom staff. In this type of facility, you might have two 12:1:1 classrooms (12 kids:1 teacher:1 aide), which means that in addition to your direct care staff back in the residential part, you've got 2 teachers and 2 aides. So you're not having fewer staff and you might have more. Given the levels of difficulty the kids usually have with school, and the need to cover core subjects, it might be more likely to have one 12:1:1 and two 6:1:1 classrooms. That's 3 teachers and 3 aides.
You'll probably also have a nurse or two (and a small fraction of an FTE for a doctor), a couple of psychologists or social workers (often one of each), about 2 FTEs worth of food service staff, a dedicated maintenance person, a couple of dedicated clerical/secretarial people to deal with all of the educational/medical/legal record-keeping and receiving visitors and so forth, and a facility director to be the one-person human resource department/intake worker/constant on-call buck-stops-here person.
So, roughly you have: 22 direct care workers + 4 direct care supervisors + 3 teachers + 3 teacher aides + 2 nurses + 2 mental health staff + 2 FTE food service staff + 1 maintenance person + 2 office staff + 1 director = 42 FTE. And this is possibly underestimating the direct-care staff (and thus by extension the supervisory staff).
But wait! You're not going to have every bed filled at all times. At this size, our expected average utilization would normally be 85% (for various reasons, this isn't actually happening in JJ-world - it's complicated - but that's what the model expects). This would lead to an average of about 21 kids. And 42 employees, since they have to be there for the times when all 25 beds are actually being used (which can happen on VERY little notice, I might add, and then the kids can be taken out just as suddenly). That, right there, gives you two staff for every kid, and it's not even that difficult.
If the kids are particularly difficult, it probably wouldn't be that hard to get to 3 staff for every kid, perfectly legitimately. The two staff for every kid assumes somewhat difficult kids but not the worst of the worst. And supposedly the worst of the worst are the only ones that are supposed to be in the facilities.
Now, there are some actual problems with the way the payment system is structured, along with actual problems with under-utilized facilities etc. - but "two employees for every bed" is NOT AT ALL unreasonable. In fact, if a residential program has much lower than that when the entirety of staff is considered, I have to wonder if the program is providing adequate care.
It is actually not at all unreasonable for there to be two staff members employed for every youth placed in a JJ facility, Residential Treatment Center, or what-have-you. In fact, I'd argue that this is low. What follows is going to be an explanation that is fairly in-depth and technical, yet oversimplified at some points.
You see, residential settings of whatever sort require 24/7 coverage. If you assume that nobody takes time off ever, that means just over 4 FTEs are required to have one person per shift. Given vacation, sick leave, mandatory training, the requirement to have a bit of transition so that you don't just have one person literally passing a log book to another and walking out, etc...realistically, to have 24-hour coverage by one person requires somewhere around 5 to 5.5 FTEs.
The least intensive accepted overall staffing ratio is 1 direct care staff:8 youth in care. And that's for the kids who have no more than "moderate" difficulties in a single dimension of impairment, or "mild" in more than one. You're NOT going to be doing that in a JJ facility. After all, they're there because they violated the law - for the sake of example, I'll call them "severe" on behavior, which by our current guidelines calls for a 1:5 staff-to-youth ratio. (I could argue that youth in state-run facilities are by definition "hard to place", which would change this to a 1:3 ratio, but I'll use the 1:5 for now.)
A common model for state-run juvenile facilities is the 24-bed or 25-bed facility with on-grounds school. The general math is close enough either way that things wouldn't just utterly fall apart. If you did nothing but provide direct care services - nothing at all - then given that you need about 5 FTEs for a single worker to provide 24/7 coverage, and you have a 1:5 staffing ratio at any given period, then at this ratio you've got to have 25 direct care workers for 24 or 25 kids - approximately one employee per youth served.
But wait! Supervisory staff are required for various reasons - there are some things that are not supposed to be done by entry-level direct care staff, and there should be supervision just in general. A standard we use is one supervisor for eight direct care workers - so in this model we'd need three supervisors. Three supervisors won't provide true 24/7 coverage, but it's probably OK to do some of this via on-call coverage. Call it four FTE once all the rotating on-call stuff is handled.
But wait! Kids are in school during the day, right? Well, not always (they can get sick or refuse to move or there can be some other issue), so there still needs to be some degree of regular direct care staff available while the kids are in school. Maybe one or two instead of five, on the day shift. Instead of direct care staff, you've probably got classroom staff. In this type of facility, you might have two 12:1:1 classrooms (12 kids:1 teacher:1 aide), which means that in addition to your direct care staff back in the residential part, you've got 2 teachers and 2 aides. So you're not having fewer staff and you might have more. Given the levels of difficulty the kids usually have with school, and the need to cover core subjects, it might be more likely to have one 12:1:1 and two 6:1:1 classrooms. That's 3 teachers and 3 aides.
You'll probably also have a nurse or two (and a small fraction of an FTE for a doctor), a couple of psychologists or social workers (often one of each), about 2 FTEs worth of food service staff, a dedicated maintenance person, a couple of dedicated clerical/secretarial people to deal with all of the educational/medical/legal record-keeping and receiving visitors and so forth, and a facility director to be the one-person human resource department/intake worker/constant on-call buck-stops-here person.
So, roughly you have: 22 direct care workers + 4 direct care supervisors + 3 teachers + 3 teacher aides + 2 nurses + 2 mental health staff + 2 FTE food service staff + 1 maintenance person + 2 office staff + 1 director = 42 FTE. And this is possibly underestimating the direct-care staff (and thus by extension the supervisory staff).
But wait! You're not going to have every bed filled at all times. At this size, our expected average utilization would normally be 85% (for various reasons, this isn't actually happening in JJ-world - it's complicated - but that's what the model expects). This would lead to an average of about 21 kids. And 42 employees, since they have to be there for the times when all 25 beds are actually being used (which can happen on VERY little notice, I might add, and then the kids can be taken out just as suddenly). That, right there, gives you two staff for every kid, and it's not even that difficult.
If the kids are particularly difficult, it probably wouldn't be that hard to get to 3 staff for every kid, perfectly legitimately. The two staff for every kid assumes somewhat difficult kids but not the worst of the worst. And supposedly the worst of the worst are the only ones that are supposed to be in the facilities.
Now, there are some actual problems with the way the payment system is structured, along with actual problems with under-utilized facilities etc. - but "two employees for every bed" is NOT AT ALL unreasonable. In fact, if a residential program has much lower than that when the entirety of staff is considered, I have to wonder if the program is providing adequate care.