New week - new adventures

Second Week - New Adventures

Case Management

The second week was a good one for me. I have started to feel more comfortable with what I am to do in the agency. This past Monday I found out that I will have a "case load" of clients that I will be working with who are in the schools. What I will be doing is observing the kids in the school setting, watching them interact with the teachers and other classmates. I have followed a Case Worker with T.A.S. who has been doing it for over twenty years. I will be working with him since the three kids I will be observing in the classroom are part of his case load. I am excited about this opportunity to work with a veteran in the field. I spent quite a bit of time on Monday and Tues. reviewing the case assessments on the clients I will be observing.

Dr. Perry

The four interns at T.A.S. this semester have been meeting with a psychologist, Dr. Perry on Monday afternoons. Last Monday was the second time we had met with him. He is a very insightful person, and I look forward to meeting with him more as the semester goes on. Like Mr. Thompson, the case manager, I have learned much from Dr. Perry in the just the limited time spent with him. He has been very insightful in working with clients and what to look for in certain situations.

The week as a whole


This past week was a good one for me at the agency. I am becoming more familiar with the people who work there. More importantly, I am becoming more familiar with the clients T.A.S. serves. I have been facilitating the day program that happens at the agency, where kids come in and work on an educational program called A+. What it does is help the kids who have been expelled work on there education. Through this program, these kids can be integrated back in to school with class credit. What I have been observing is the kids and how they interact with the program. When they first come in, they have no motivation to work on it. Then, after two or three days, when they realize that this isn't something to come in and mess around with, they start doing the work. Many of them are actually surprising them self in the fact that they can learn in a safe environment, at there own pace. I will be with these same set of kids throughout the semester as I am in and out of the office (between working on the case load within the school setting) and I am excited to work with them to help them understand that even though society may look at them as troublemakers, they are smart and can do the work. The day program is twelve weeks, so I will be able to work with them until they leave, which I am excited about.

How could doing research for classes impact your relationship with your clients?

I believe that doing research for classes could impact the relationship with my clients by helping me see how I can better communicate with the clients. I am working mainly with kids in the 7-10th grades. Many kids in that age range is still searching who they are. They test the water to see what they can get away with. Many of them are probably in a situation where they do not have a stable, positive influence in their lives. Research would help me understand who to conduct myself with them. It would also help me know how to communicate in a way they can understand me. As I said earlier in this blog entry, these kids are good kids, just misunderstood because no one has taken the time to understand them. So to answer how I feel research would impact my relationship with my clients, I feel research would help me understand how I can interact with them in a way they would appreciate. Not that this is something I have not been trying to do since i have been there, but the kids are mainly a population I have not spent too much time with on a one on one basis.

Practicum hours this week: 14
Practicum hours to date: 32