Renee Polsky

Agency: Casa de los Niños

Term: Spring - 2004

As a psychology major, I was not very impressed with the way their internship program worked and their lack of attention in helping me find a site where I could intern. I had heard wonderful things about the Institute for Children, Youth & Families’ internship program and decided that this would be a much better option for me. I was matched up perfectly with Casa and was so excited to get started. Knowing that I would be applying to graduate schools in the field of social work, I thought that being the Social Work Intern would give me an incredible opportunity to further introduce me to the field. I have found that I absolutely want to go into the field of social work and am currently waiting to get responses from schools that I applied to.

For the past two months I have been the Social Work Intern at Casa de los Ninos in Tucson, Arizona. Casa de los Ninos is a safe place for children to go to when they have been maltreated, whether abused, neglected or they just have no other safe place to go. This residential shelter can care for up to 48 children from birth to age eight. At least one nurse is at Casa 24 hours a day providing immediate medical attention to many of the vulnerable children.

Before I was allowed to enter Casa, I was required to attend a 20-hour very intense training over a period of six days. This training was very beneficial, teaching me the history and growing activity of Casa de los Ninos. Each day, new information was brought to my attention of how to work with the fragile children, using the Adlerian theory to teach and interact and renewing my CPR certification as well as being introduced to people who already worked there.

Being the social work intern has been a very rewarding experience so far, filled with many learning opportunities. There wasn’t an official social work training, I basically learned things as they came along. I work with two social workers as well as the social work supervisor helping them with many of their tasks. One of the major tasks that I have learned and am now ready to complete on my own is the admittance of the children into Casa. Admitting a child consists of taking the child to the nurse for a general medical exam while I work with Child Protective Services. After the signatures, paperwork and entering the child’s information into the computer, I introduce the child’s case to the Social Worker who will be responsible for the child’s appointments, visitations, documentation and contact with the CPS case worker.

Another one of my tasks is to supervise the visitations. As a way of trying to return children to their improved safe home or foster home, families and foster families are able to visit their children for one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon Monday through Friday. I have to watch these visitations to make sure the parents are behaving appropriately with their children, they are following the rules and are always with their child.

Social work consists of a great amount of documentation. I am responsible for entering documentation into the computer, such as phone calls received and phone calls made out on behalf of the children. This can become very tedious, but is definitely beneficial when all paperwork is examined by the court system making important decisions for the future of the child.

This job requires a lot of organization and attention. One must be truly interested in the lives of these children to try and keep updated with their cases and their needs. I have also chosen to volunteer for three hours a week with one of the groups in addition to the internship hours. I would highly suggest doing this because I get to work one on one with the children learning more than just their cases, but also about them and get to help the social worker make the best decisions for the children. Casa de los Ninos is a very friendly environment and they are more than happy to have me there. Every single time before I leave from working there, I am thanked by numerous people for my help, which makes me feel needed and beneficial to them.

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

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