The intent of Field Notes is to provide a venue for MSW child welfare students to write about their field placement experiences while also providing the public with some insight into what MSW child welfare field placements are like.
I am a IV-E scholar this year and am interning at a school as my first year placement. In this school, the SW department strives to promote students in doing the best they can at school. We often work with students individually who are having difficulties in the community, at home, academically, behaviorally, or whatever the challenge they face in being successful in their schoolwork.
Since the beginning of the year, I have had a small “caseload” of students that I provide this one-on-one support for. One student has been most consistent for me, who I began working with in the beginning of the year and continue to meet with weekly now. She has been in foster care since early in the school year. Our meetings, to me, are simple. She is young and is involved in other therapy and services in the community so we just meet weekly for lunch and chat about what she has going on. I knew she enjoyed this time but did not think much of it until around the holidays. Her class was learning about random acts of kindness and they were asked to each pick someone in the school to give a card and treat to. She chose me and came to deliver the following note:
“Thank you for making me safe Ms. Emily. Thank you that I am having lunch with you. You are pretty.”
I was touched that she thought of me for this note and the message about keeping her safe. Before this I had assumed that she was a bit too young to understand the intent to our lunches and my support for her at the school. It has been an influential experience working with her as she has gone through this transition and has truly shown me, although just a glimpse, the effects that our work in child welfare can have on the children involved.
Written by Emily, a Title IV-E Scholar