Interning at DFCS has most certainly impacted my personal, professional, and academic goals. Before my internship, I knew I wanted to pursue my Master of Social Work after graduation and had some ideas about potential careers within the social work realm. My internship with DFCS has truly solidified my desire to pursue an MSW. While I have enjoyed my placement at DFCS, the internship has shown me that I don’t think DFCS is necessarily the agency I would like to work with after graduating with my masters. My work with DFCS (and seeing how many of our clients struggle with substance abuse) has solidified my thoughts that I would like to one day work as a substance abuse and mental health counselor. I could not be more thankful for my internship …show more content…
Before interning with DFCS I would not have described myself as someone lacking confidence, rather someone who just needed to realize their full potential. Interning with DFCS brought that out in me. At first I was very scared and nervous because I did not want to do something wrong or mess up, but as the weeks went by my confidence grew tremendously. Through the weeks and months interning at DFCS it also became clear that my supervisors trusted me more. The confidence they had in me boosted my confidence in that I knew that if they thought I could handle something that I could handle it. At lot of where I grew confidence wise through my internship was with working with our clients. Many of our clients come from various backgrounds and cultures than we (both interns and staff) are accustomed to which you must be aware of when interacting with them. One thing I learned regarding our client population is that we do not have a defined client population other than every family with an open DFCS case has at least one child. Even then, that does not hold true for all clients coming to DFCS to get food stamps or Medicaid. Some insight that I gained while working with our clients is that people can become involved with DFCS in a variety of ways. Just because someone has an open DFCS case does not make them a bad person, rather it just means that maybe they are at a point in their life where they need help and guidance that