Plot

A 20-something supervising staff member of a residential treatment facility navigates the troubled waters of that world alongside her co-worker and longtime boyfriend.

At a foster-care facility for at-risk teenagers, Grace is a young counselor trying to do her best for kids who often have been pulled from the worst kinds of home situations. Even then, life is not easy as Grace and her colleagues care for kids who are too often profoundly scarred, even as they try to have lives of their own. Now, things are coming to a head as Grace readies for marriage even as some her charges are coming to major turning points in their lives. To cope, Grace will have to make difficult perceptions and decisions that could put her career, and more importantly her charges, at dire risk.—Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)

Short Term 12 is a residential facility for troubled teenagers. The staff include Grace, Mason, Jessica and the new guy, Nate. Grace is the leader of the team and is secretly in a relationship with Mason. Things are going reasonably well until Grace discovers that she is pregnant. At about the same time, a new patient, Jaden, arrives and she stirs up unpleasant memories for Grace.—grantss

At short term 12 community for the underprivileged and at-risk youth, the secret couple of Grace and Mason work with devotion as supervisors, consulting the troubled teenagers. Under those circumstances, capable and compassionate Grace does her best to support the kids, nevertheless, she too is a scarred individual who elaborately conceals her damaged self behind her work. Eventually, when the gifted, tough but frail Jayden who suffers from self-harm disorder is admitted to the community, Grace will have no other choice but to deal with her own past. Can the old wounds heal?—Nick Riganas

Short Term 12 is a residential care facility for troubled youth or those having issues in there home life. After a young girl approaches the facility, past experiences and memories are revived for the worker in charge. As she tries to comvince those around her of the underlying issues with the new patient she has to also deal with her own past being brought back to the surface.

Grace is the young supervisor of Short Term 12, a group home for troubled teenagers. She lives with her long-term boyfriend and coworker, Mason, but finds it difficult to open up to him emotionally. When Grace finds out she is pregnant, she schedules an appointment for an abortion; she eventually tells an overjoyed Mason about the pregnancy, but not about her plan to have an abortion. At the facility, Grace and Mason focus their efforts on Marcus, a Short Term 12 resident who is about to turn 18 and is struggling with the prospect of leaving the facility.

Grace bonds with Jayden, a recent arrival at Short Term 12 who has a history of self-harm. Jayden distances herself from the other teenagers as she does not intend to stay at the facility for long, and when her father fails to pick her up on her birthday, she reacts violently towards the staff. After her outburst, she sits in the "cool-down room" with Grace, who shows Jayden her own scars from cutting herself. That night, Jayden leaves the facility in the middle of her birthday celebrations and, unable to force her to return, Grace follows Jayden to her father's house. After finding the house empty, they return to Short Term 12. When Jayden reads Grace a cryptic story she has written, Grace begins to suspect that Jayden was abused by her father.

At a party hosted by Mason's foster parents, he proposes to Grace, who accepts. The following morning, Grace is upset by a phone call that reveals her father is being released from prison, and refuses to be consoled by Mason. She arrives at Short Term 12 to discover that Jayden has been picked up by her father overnight. She is angry at the decision to send Jayden back to her father, but her boss maintains that Jayden denied that she was abused by him. Later that day, Grace finds that Marcus has attempted to commit suicide after the death of his fish.

While waiting at the hospital as Marcus is being treated, Grace breaks down and Mason becomes upset with her for refusing to talk to him about how she feels; instead, she tells him that she no longer wants to marry him and that she plans to have an abortion. Upset, she returns to Jayden's father's house and breaks in, intending to injure him while he sleeps, but she is interrupted by Jayden, who suggests that they smash his car instead. Grace opens up to Jayden about being sexually abused by her own father, and after Jayden shows Grace bruises from where her father hit her they return together to Short Term 12, where Jayden reports her father for physical abuse. Grace goes home to apologize to Mason, who tells her that Marcus will recover.

Several weeks later, Grace starts seeing a therapist and she is shown viewing a sonogram with Mason. Mason tells the rest of the staff about running into Marcus, who is doing well and has a girlfriend.