Clay Smalley works to turn around young lives

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – One man is working one child at a time to help turn lives around at the Warren County Day Treatment facility, an intermediate facility for school children who get into trouble in their home school and are court ordered to the center.

Clay Smalley is the recreation director and mental health counselor at the center.

Smalley has worked in the county schools for 27 years and grew up with a father who mentored the neighboring kids.

Although sharing his father made him envious back when he was child, today he carries on that legacy of giving back to the community by serving the youth.

Students at the center have anywhere between six months to a year to earn their way back into regular school.

From 11 a.m. until noon every day, Smalley supervises recreational activities, self-esteem groups and speakers who come in to talk about real life.

However, those are the same students who push back against Smalley’s efforts to help reform them. But he refuses to give up and encourages students not to give up on themselves