Jessica Kuenzli

Agency: La Paloma Family Services

Term: Fall - 2003

I work at an agency called La Paloma Family Services. The agency provides services to at risk adolescents. The adolescents come from one of three departments in Tucson: Administration Office of the Courts (AOC), Child Protective Services (CPS) or Department of Corrections (DOC). Occasionally, however we do receive intakes from some of the mental health networks in Tucson. The adolescents placed are placed in a 24-hour group home depending on the individual’s needs. La Paloma has five group homes for girls and two group homes for boys.

The property where I work is called the Amparo group home. This house is unique in that it is able to hold 20 clients. This number includes both adolescents and babies. At my internship site I am responsible for teaching the young women the necessary skills to live on their own as well, as teach those with children how to properly mother them. The clients who live at Amparo receive a treatment program that is designed to meet their specific needs. Each client decides with the help of a staff member what their short-term as well as long-term goals should be, and then the staff helps them achieve them. On a daily basis we provide them with advice but ultimately we present them with the opportunities to make their own choices, and learn to accept to consequences of their decisions whether positive or negative. My main responsibilities are knowing the whereabouts of the clients at all times, handing out medications at the proper time, completing medication counts on each shift, taking clients to appointments, ensuring communication between co-staff as well as being an open ear to the clients.

I decided to do an internship because I wanted to gain experience in the field before I graduate, and more importantly I wanted to make sure that I really wanted to pursue social work as my career. When I graduate in May 2004 I plan to take a year off to take my GRE, apply to schools that offer a Master’s in Social Work (MSW), and continue to work at La Paloma in order to gain more experience. My career goal is to get an MSW, which will enable me to be a social worker within the medical field. One of the deciding factors to pursue this as my career is the opportunity to work within a system that has a diverse clientele.

I know from my own experience that I used to sit in class and wonder, “am I really going to ever use this information”. Well now I am able to sit in my classes and ask, “when will I be using this information?” On a daily basis at my internship site I use information from my Family Studies classes. For example, in the course on adolescents we were taught about the adolescent personal fable. I understood this idea before my internship experience but after actually working with adolescents I realize how true this concept really is and how to help adolescents despite the fact that they have this invincibility about them.

About one month ago it was a Saturday evening some of the staff were making dinner for the girls and the clients were sitting in the living room. I was in the office doing some paperwork and I heard a client screaming at the top of her lungs. When I walked into the room I found the screaming client holding her baby while yelling at a staff member calling her every name possible. The room had gone from a peaceful one to one full of tension. The clients around the screaming client were silent and the staff members were trying to calm her down. During the verbal escalation the girl broke down and started crying saying that she hated it here and how she feels like a prisoner. It was when I was looking back on this evening that I realized what these girls’ lives are like and the things that they have been through. They are not placed here because they come from a great family life but instead because they have been part of the system. I don’t think that I ever will forget that night and I hope that I never do because I learned so much from that girl’s breakdown.

My advice to anyone thinking about doing an internship is to do it. Take the opportunity! You will learn so much, you will be able to apply information that you have learned and you will be able to see if you are sure you want to go into the field you are studying. The awesome thing is that while out in the field you are earning seven units of credit towards your degree. Along the same lines keep in mind the credits you are earning are in fact earned. The internship is a lot of hard work but it is well worth it.

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

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