Early on, attendants lived in the same wards where patients resided.  In the 1940s, the hospital added a dormitory for employees.

One CO, in a 1988 survey reflecting on his experience at the mental hospital, reported the following.

For the year and a half that I was at Cherokee State Hospital, we never went to the dining hall but were greeted by other hospital attendants with jeers like “yellow-belly” and “Cee-O”.  At first the patients echoed the employees’ taunts, but within a few months that ceased.  Though the administration made feeble attempts to make us welcome, the hospital staff continued to be uniformly negative toward us.  (in Sareyan p. 240)

The various denominations operating camps provided financial support for the COs to cover their modest maintenance, medical and dental needs, as well as a small monthly allowance.  One Methodist woman from Minneapolis, Kansas wrote to CPS leaders about her efforts to persuade others in her congregation to support COs.

Our [Methodist] women’s magazine urged us to send money and gifts to our World Peace Commission to be used for CPS camps.  I called their attention to it and they voted to send $5.00 out of the treasury.  But some A No. 1 propagandists got wind of it and raised a furor and now the leaders are confused and don’t know what to do.  Our pastor’s wife suggests we drop it to keep down trouble.  But I assure you that a few of us will do something; I hope several times over that amount.  Also, as I have opportunity, I will see that the truth is given out. (Mrs. Omar Joyce in Goossen, p. 24)

While the Methodist Commission on World Peace was able to fund its COs, Mrs. Joyce illustrated the conflicts faced in congregations, and the important role women like her played in bringing the need before the congregants.

The men published three issues of a camp paper Release from November 1944 through March 1946.