Hello Friend,
I hope you are doing well. Unfortunately, I am not :(
As my field placement is coming to an end, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on how I went about this critical part of my education and how it impacted me.
As is required by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), it is required that everyone BSW student must participate in a field placement. Living in North Carolina, I also was given the opportunity to participate in the Child Welfare Education Collaborative. This is a program that allows students to take an additional class that prepares them to have a field placement in a local Department of Social Services office. The class helps students receive the necessary training to be ready to hit the ground running as soon as they begin their field placement the following semester. For full disclosure, I initially did not have a desire to work at DSS. The only reason I picked it was because I do not have a drivers license and the local DSS office was within walking distance of my house. My feelings on DSS have changed so much, as you will see later in this post.
My first day at my placement, I was assigned to go through a 1200 page stack of medical birth records and redact any identifying information related to the child's biological parents. I was not upset doing this assignment, as my previous job experience was mainly as a branch administrator's assistant, so I was used to being given mundane tasks. That was exactly how I viewed this assignment. Given the large stack of paper, it took me a few days to fully parse through every page. On the second day, I realized that this assignment was actually an excellent first exposure to how the department worked and what our clients typically go through. In between the countless notes analyzing the newborn's meconium, there were drug screen reports along with symptoms of the in utero drug exposure, nurse records of exchanges between the department social worker, and exchanges between the child's biological parents, child, and social worker. This was all valuable information that gave me a much better picture on the beginning of the child's life and helped me realize that the biological parents are far more than whatever incident resulted in their child coming in to our custody. This task that I had initially viewed as busy work, turned out to be one of my greatest learning experiences that changed my thought process in a radical way.
Now do not get me wrong, I DID have some tasks that weren't exactly learning experiences. There were plenty of times in where my coworkers would just ask me to scan documents and put them on a CD, put tabs into folders, or go through a huge stack of cards to retrieve one for them. I was not upset by these tasks as they helped my coworkers focus on the tasks that directly impacted the child. This is where I felt like my internship became a balancing act. I often view organizations/offices as a clock. Some pieces may be bigger than others, but if you take one piece out, the clock will not function. This mindset is what makes it so I do not mind doing more administrative or mundane tasks, as they allow my coworkers to focus on more important work. For me I felt like I was having to balance asking my coworkers and field instructors for tasks related to the competencies I need to learn from the internship and just accepting whatever tasks that my coworkers need for me to do in order to make the overall process more efficient. Balancing my learning experience with the desire to make the overall cause more efficient was a bit challenging and often made me feel like I was walking a tightrope. I did not want to feel like I was being a pest by constantly asking my coworkers and boss for tasks that they may not be able to give me (either due to not having anything or because they do not have enough time to teach me the process). This was one of the most stressful parts of having my field placement.
In the end I was able to meet a majority of my competencies. If it weren't for my field advisor being an advocate for me at the beginning, I am not sure if I would have been able to learn to advocate for myself. All of my coworkers were truly amazing and cared about me and helped me to build my self esteem in such a great way. My unit at my local DSS office was absolutely incredible. It felt like a family and everyone is truly passionate about their work and helping the children. I am hoping that I could possibly do my field placement at DSS again in the future (or just do work there) as the work they are doing is really making a difference.
Have you had a field placement?
If so, what was it like?
I hope you have a wonderful day. Mine got a bit better, thanks to sharing with you :)
Sincerely,
Benjamin
