Brian Ellexson

Agency: Our Family Services

Term: Spring - 2002

I am currently working my first semester of a two-semester internship at Our Town Family Center. For these semesters I will work in the role of an Intern Crisis Counselor with responsibilities as varied as answering the crisis hotline to working with paid, experienced crisis counselors at in-home counseling appointments. During appointments I am allowed the freedom to work with the clients without first having to pass things by the more experienced counselor, complete trust is given to my counseling skills, which were honed during 24 hours of training before starting the internship. In many ways, the latitude I am given is equal to the latitude given to any other staff member. The crisis intervention unit at Our Town Family Center works primarily with families who are experiencing crises with their children. These situations can be almost anything under the sun: problems with children running away, violent behavior from children towards siblings and even the parents, and families who come in because they lack the skills to deal with their children. Our clientele is varied and diverse and provides an immense amount of experience.

I chose to work at Our Town Family Center because after graduation, I plan to join the Peace Corps and work with at-risk youth populations, aged 10-21, in South America. This internship gives me the experience necessary to apply for these programs when the time comes. After this period of my life, I expect to apply for graduate school programs in family therapy or psychology. This two-semester internship along with the work I expect to do in the Peace Corps gives me a solid background from which to apply to graduate programs. This internship also gives me an opportunity to actually begin counseling, something that I would not normally have the chance to do until much later in my academic career.

In my short time at Our Town Family Center I have learned first that counseling is not something that comes naturally to anybody. I am still uncomfortable working in this environment. That being said, I can certainly see myself improving as a counselor and I can foresee a time when I am relatively comfortable doing this work. I have also learned that there is a huge population out there that needs the services of agencies like Our Town. To students thinking about doing an ICYF internship, and more specifically an internship at Our Town, my only advice would be to do it! It isn't easy, and the learning curve is pretty steep when it comes to counseling, but this is a quality agency. Never are interns left to fend for themselves, never are they left in the dark; for the most part we are equal to the staff members there and treated as such. It is a pleasure working there.

On my first counseling appointment at Our Town, we traveled out of the office to an in-home appointment and visited a family whose daughter was having severe behavioral problems. Our goal was to try to get the daughter to talk about why she was so angry and what she could potentially do to control her anger. This plan might have worked if the little girl had ever heard it. From the moment we walked in the door, if we tried to talk to her at all she would scream and run out of the room to her own, slamming the door. This experience taught me right from the beginning that you have to be flexible when providing therapy to families-things do not always work out they way you want them to.

University of Arizona | College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
School of Family and Consumer Sciences | Family Studies and Human Development

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