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Recent Experiences of Our Interns Christy Powers is a junior in the School of Social Work at Indiana University. She was a summer intern for the Interim Deputy Director of the Indiana Bureau of Child Development, Indiana Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA). She was involved in projects such as the Facility Financing Loan Program, the Search Committee for Deputy Director, the Building Bright Beginnings, and the Development of Web Based Instruction for Child Care Providers. She learned a lot about administrative social work by attending meetings, making professional contacts, and communicating with child care providers. She appreciated the opportunity FASR offered and learned a lot about the government system from my internship. The Facility Financing Loan Program is a partnership between FSSA, the Indiana Development Finance Authority, and SCORE. The program offers CAP loans to licensed child care providers who need to renovate their centers or build a new one. Christy made follow up calls to the providers to make sure they received adequate services. The Search Committee is a group of professionals spreading the word of the Deputy Director position. Christy communicated with the committee and will help go over the resumes for final selection. The Building Bright Beginnings (BBB) is a governor’s initiative to improve child care services throughout the state. Christy is on a committee with other interns to promote the BBB booth at the State Fair. The Web Based instruction is in the process of being approved. It will offer web courses to child care providers interested in furthering their education. Christy helped construct and send out a survey to all of the counties in Indiana. She complied the results of the survey. Chasidy Wright is a senior at Indiana University this year and will be graduating in May with a major in Psychology and a minor in Business. She plans to pursue a career in counseling children. Her internship, under Janet Deahl in the Bureau of Child Development, involved conducting phone evaluations on the 4C program, which is the childcare voucher program funded through the Indiana State government. These evaluations were given to both the childcare providers and the parents, the receivers of the subsidy. She states, “The participants interviewed were very vocal on the positive points of the program and on where improvement is needed. Many people offered ideas on how to achieve the improvements needed.” She also attended a meeting for a partnership that will be forming between Head Start and many other agencies in the late spring or early summer of this year. These partnerships will allow the different agencies to work more closely together, and exchange their ideas and benefits for the good of Indiana's people. Stephanie McCallister's internship with FSSA was unique in that it allowed her the opportunity to work with many different areas within the Division of Family and Children (DFC). She spent most of her time working in various areas of the Bureau of Family Protection and Preservation. She spent several days with the Interstate Child Placement Compact, which deals with foster care and adoption placements crossing state lines as well as those which are international. Here, she developed a greater understanding of the important involvement of this commission in supervising this process while working to alleviate a portion of the staff's immense workload. Next, she changed gears slightly as she went to work with program and policy. With the aid of her supervisors, Stephanie learned how to research the legal sites which brought about DFC and all that it encompasses. Following her time with policy, she worked with licensing. It was with licensing that she was able to learn about the standards held for foster care and other licensed facilities. She worked with the Indiana Commission on the the Social Status of Black Males to aid in preparations for the national conference being hosted in Indianapolis. Stephanie feels that her internship provided her with valuable information and a greater appreciation for the endeavors of DFC. It is her hope to attend graduate school in the future. Jennifer Hand’s internship is with FSSA’s Data Management and Analysis division of the Office of Medicaid Policy and Planning (OMPP). Jennifer works with the fact sheets concerning the various Medicaid programs that OMPP distributes. She is also currently working on the 50 most frequently asked questions and their answers for the OMPP web page. She writes, “This internship is providing a wonderful insight into a large social program. You cannot be effective in social work if you do not comprehend the government systems clients deal with, and this internship is certainly helping me to understand one of those systems.” Jennifer graduated in December of 1999 with a BA in Psychology and a BA in Gender Studies. She plans to attend IUPUI in the Fall of 2000 to earn a Masters degree in Social Work. Jennifer Alley says of her experience "I will graduate in May with my MSW from IUPUI with a concentration in Macro. I did a variety of tasks during my internship at the Family and Social Services Administration, Division of Family and Children, Institutional Child Protection Services. I read and reviewed all procedures and policies impacting ICPS, from report taking to investigation to the follow-up. I answered phones and took reports of alleged abuse and neglect. I accompanied examiners on investigations, and even conducted some of the interviews. I wrote follow-up letters to directors of institutions and prosecuting attorneys and conducted an analysis of a foster parent training for the State. I attended training seminars that the State offers and performed an evaluation of the department for a class project that will be presented to members of the department. I composed packets of information for people all over the State wanting information about child abuse and neglect and referred people to the correct social service agencies. Everyday is different and I have enjoyed it tremendously." Amy Brown is an MSW student interested in macro practice. She feels that her internship with FASR provided an excellent learning experience. She worked for the state Indiana Family and Social Services Administration in the Division of Family and Children. Her primary role was to help create and implement a statewide program evaluation of Indiana's childcare voucher program. Specific tasks included literature reviews, data analysis and collection, and conducting interviews with clients who receive childcare funds. The primary goal of this evaluation is to understand what policies are working well for Indiana's families and children, and what areas of the program need to be changed to better fit our community's needs. In addition to the excitement of helping create a program evaluation that would benefit Indiana's children by making childcare more accessible to low income families, Amy was able to get involved with lobbying efforts during the legislative session. She spoke with legislators about bills and policy that were relevant to issues of childcare, and even helped get a bill passed that would benefit that health and well being of low-income children who attend day care. About the experience, Amy states, "I have really enjoyed my internship through FASR, and am grateful for the opportunities I received to get involved with the policy side of social work." Jean Farison is an undergraduate student at the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs. For her summer internship sponsored by the Institute for Family and Social Responsibility (FASR), Jean assisted with the development of an innovative partnership between the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA) and the Diocese of Indianapolis. The Diocese was in the process of building a child care facility, serving their clients and other homeless families in the Marion County area. The Diocese recognized the multiple issues facing this special population and was looking to create a facility to provide wrap-around services to families in addition to child care. As part of this effort, FSSA will create a statewide strategic plan for the child care needs of homeless families throughout Indiana. As an intern, Jean researched the present status of child care services in homeless shelters throughout Indiana. A part of this research entailed designing a survey, compiling the results and assisting with the development of a statewide task force to develop a long range strategic plan. In addition to this project, Jean also worked to support the initial discussions with private sector grant agencies to establish a funding mechanism for child care providers to do major renovations of facilities or to construct new buildings. In the process, Jean researched best practices in other states and served as a resource in the development of legislation for the next legislative session. Ramla Perry received her BSW from Ball State University and is now enrolled in the accelerated MSW program at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. She interned with the IMPACT program with the Family and Social Services Administration visiting local county offices to learn more about the program from the family case coordinators. She found that the purpose of this program is to provide education and training services to AFDC and Food Stamp recipients and to assist families/individuals in reaching economic self sufficiency through job placement. She interviewed clients and contract service managers to find out about the barriers that people face and the services that are provided. Ramla organized a clothing drive in collaboration with the Salvation Army to provide clothing for IMPACT participants. She contracted monitoring with the providers. She also studied how policy changes impact the clients being served. For more information about her internship, you may email Ramla or for more information about IMPACT you may contact:Jim Stiles Jingjiang Zhu with the help of FASR, Jingjiang started an internship with Bureau of Program Evaluation, Division of Family and Children, Family and Social Services Administration on January 14, 1999. She is part of a team which is conducting a statewide evaluation of the child care subsidy program. The objective of the program is to evaluate the effectiveness of the program and to see what could be improved to make the program better. Her main responsibilities include: literature research of nationwide child care evaluations, designing an interview and a survey instrument, data entry upon completion of the survey and conducting data analysis. Jingjiang's internship has led to a full time position in the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration. She will begin her full time position in April. |
