Over the past two decades, Turning Winds has matured into a sophisticated program that blends the benefits of a wilderness program, a residential treatment center, and a boarding school. The Turning Winds difference is grounded in this unusual hybrid approach and our skilled, caring, and dedicated team working tirelessly to give our teenage clients the best care possible. We help teens rediscover themselves, and they leave treatment with a renewed belief in their own abilities.
Being part of the Turning Winds team is a labor of love for approximately 50 employees, many of whom have come from points far and wide to work at our beautiful facility. They each bring with them a passion for saving lives, inspiring kids, and giving back.
Team members trust each other and have a great way of interacting with each other and the kids. How do colleagues get this tight? “It helps that we all really like each other,” says chief operations officer Carl Baisden with a big smile. He compares it to a loving marriage in which spouses are each other’s most important person in life. Families come first at Turning Winds and that principle applies to the treatment team as well.
“We strongly believe that and it transfers over to Turning Winds,” says Baisden. “The most important people in my world are my teammates and my partners. They are the people I am in the trenches with. In a family-like system in which the people at the top are united and they are the most important thing to each other, everyone within that system feeds off that safety and that predictability. This leaves a lot less space for manipulation and unhealthy behavior patterns in the kids. That means the most united people in a family should be mom and dad. At Turning Winds we follow suit with the most important people being my teammates.”
One of the dedicated staff members is Turning Winds therapist Kim Sparks: “I really enjoy the team membership. Everybody steps in. Everybody helps everybody. Compared to other places I’ve worked, it’s just very well organized with so many different departments functioning. It’s not just a few people handling all levels of the operations. But mostly, I think it’s the camaraderie among the staff. I haven’t worked in a program as organized or with as much support as there is here.”
“The one thing the staff coming to work here have in common is that compassion they have for the kids,” says Sparks. “We have a strong desire to help. We are truly compassionate maybe because a lot of us probably struggled with the same stuff when we were younger. So I think we can definitely relate to the kids, and they know we can relate because we’re all human, and we all made mistakes when we were younger.”
Turning Winds CEO Owen Baisden considers his staff a breed apart. “One of the things our staff have in common is they, to one degree or another, all struggled in their youth. So, they can relate to the people they’re working with. And they have a mission. They’re not out to make a lot of money or to get rich, instead, they have a mission to help people.”
That mission is to rescue teens from crisis situations, renew their belief in their own potential, reunite them with their families, and put them on a sustainable path to success. Contact us online for more information, or call us at 800-845-1380. If your call isn’t answered personally, one of us will get back to you as soon as possible.
