Teresaann Pilkinton’s career at Youth Villages began as an intern at a residential campus.

She identified so much with the organization’s mission and values, she knew she wanted to return full-time after graduation.

The Youth Villages Intercept program, which provides intensive in-home services to emotionally and behaviorally troubled children and their families, attracted Teresaann’s attention most.

With a bachelor’s degree and little experience, she was hired on as a pilot Intercept counselor. The pilot program allows junior counselors to work a lower caseload and closely work with experienced counselors until they are ready to work alongside regular full-time family counselors.

She soon was promoted to senior family counselor and since then has been working partly with Intercept and partly with the Transitional Living program, which helps young adults who have grown up in foster care or state custody make a successful transition into independent adulthood. Transitional Living is part of the intensive in-home program, and counselors use much of the same approach to help these young adults as they do helping children and their families.

Transitional Living counselors have more clients than in-home counselors, but each case is typically less intensive. Teresaann meets her clients anywhere in the community – at school, at their jobs, homes, a doctor’s office or else. On a typical day, she meets up with about four clients, attends one or two meetings, completes documentation on the computer and handles any issues that may come up, often over the phone. Her goal is to help clients reach their life goals, whether that’s vocational training to get a certain job or completing college, she guides them as they make important decisions that will affect the rest of their lives.

Working in an office with like-minded counselors has been a rewarding experience for her.

“I have a great team in the office, and if it were not from them, I would not be where I am at today,” she says. “They are very passionate about what Youth Villages’ values, such as, ‘Kids’ needs come first, always.’”

For her, the best thing about working at Youth Villages is the kids.

“I believe that there is not such thing as a bad child, just a bad childhood,” she says. “When you want to work here, you need to be passionate about what you do. For me, the most rewarding thing has been to see a child return to his family after residential treatment. It took a lot of hours and a lot of hard work to get him home, but he made it!”