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| Icyf < Service_learning < Students < Internship < Meet_the_interns < Intern_stories < | |||||||
Intern Stories
Courtney SchunemanAgency: Casa de los NiñosTerm: Spring - 2003
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| I am conducting my internship at Casa de los Niños. Casa de los Niños is a private, non-profit agency, whose mission is "the prevention, intervention, and treatment of child abuse and neglect by providing: comprehensive residential shelter care for children; supportive health, education, and outreach services; and advocacy on behalf of children and families." Casa de los Niños was the first crisis nursery in the nation and over the last 30 years it has expanded to assist everyone in Southern Arizona. I am interning with the Social Work Department, and my main duties consist of monitoring visitations between residential children and their visitors. I make sure that the parents are consistent with their visits and they adhere to all regulations during visitations. I further assist the social workers with a multitude of different tasks including: the intake and discharge of residential children, documenting, managing, and filing all of the children's records, handling communications between CPS case managers, children's therapists, doctor's and the children's parents, and overall advocating for the child. I aspire to earn my doctorate in Clinical Child Psychology in order to counsel children who suffer from abuse, neglect, and loss. I decided to intern with Casa de los Niños to gain experience working with children who suffer from these experiences. I further wanted to learn what children endure when they are taken from their families. I have not only gained a lot of experience and knowledge about children, parents, and the field of social work, I have been introduced to a different world that most people do not see if they do not have this opportunity. I have seen and been directly affected by many things that most people only hear about on the news and forget about within an hour. This internship opportunity has opened my eyes and mind and will have a lasting impact. One of my biggest concerns when I began the internship was how I would deal with the parents. I believe interacting with the parents has been one of the most difficult aspects of the internship but also very rewarding. I encountered a situation where I had to deny a parent the rights of visitation and this parent became physically outraged and violent. This was a scary situation but I took control of the situation and handled it well. Overcoming this challenge gave me the confidence to deal with worse situations in the future. This internship has provided me with a general knowledge about the field of social work and introduced me to the hardships children and parents endure when Child Protective Services becomes involved. However, I have been introduced to ideas, ways of life, and people that have impacted my life. I recommend that each person take advantage of the opportunity to have an internship at an agency they find interesting. It is a life-enhancing experience that can help people learn about themselves and about their world. |
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