I appreciate the work I have completed at Foster Kinship. At my internship, I learned that there are many caregivers who need help and assistance and they aren’t getting support from their social workers. As an aspiring Clinical Social Worker, I know what role I want to play in the world of social work. I aspire to become a social worker that actually helps and supports people. My family and I received help from a social worker while I was in high school. Without our social worker’s help, we would not have worked through the struggling situation we were in. We are still good friends with our social worker because she was such an amazing person. I aspire to be that person for other families. Sometimes we get in tough situations where we need a bit of help from others to work through it.
I am grateful that my internship tied into my major of study. As a psychology student, I have had previous experience working with data on spreadsheets and coding data on SPSS software. Without this prior knowledge I gained from my psychology courses, I know the work I did at my internship would have been more difficult. I was able to bring more skills to the table in terms of analyzing and gathering data, which allowed me to run various analytical tests and reports. My supervisor really appreciated the results I was able to gather from the tests I ran on SPSS.
After completing this internship, I am more interested in working in this field. For this semester I have been trying to figure out if I want to apply to a mental health counseling graduate program or a social work program. After completing my internship, I realized I want to pursue a career in social work. I realized there is a high demand for social work, especially within the state I want to get my Master’s degree. In order to secure a full-time position in this field, I’d need to get my Master’s in Social Work. During grad school, I’d have to participate in another internship to gain more hands-on experience. Then I would need to become licensed. After getting licensed, I could work in different areas like juvenile detention centers, foster care, kinship care, etc. I could start my own practice or work in an organization that hires social workers.
One piece of advice I would give incoming interns is to choose an internship within a field you are interested in. If you are interested in mental health, try to pick an internship that is within the world of mental health. I’d also recommend choosing an internship that relates to your field of study. You may have some previous knowledge or skills you can apply to the internship that you learned from your classes. As I have mentioned before, I had previous knowledge and experience with SPSS that my supervisor didn't have so I was able to apply that knowledge to my internship experience and level up the research I was doing. Lastly, I’d advise you to advocate for yourself. This will help you academically and professionally.
