Update

Well, it's been quite a while since I've posted anything in here. It's been a combination of things -- busy with school and internship and also trying to figure out what exactly is appropriate for me to write about. I've struggled over how much I can share with you all on here, as the issue of confidentiality is always at the forefront of my mind. If I were working somewhere such as the county or a large non-profit, I could easily share stories about cases just by changing names and some details. However, since I work at a school where there are a limited number of kids that I am working with, I feel uncomfortable sharing stories. If someone from Wellstone happened to come across this blog, they could probably identify who I was talking about, even with names changed. So I've decided that I can share some more general information about what I do, including stories about positive interactions. But it wouldn't be ethical for me to divulge any sensitive information. That somewhat limits what I can share, but there are plenty of other things going on in my life that I can talk about. So I will try to update a bit more frequently :)

The first thing that I would like to tell you about is the results of the Washburn toy drive. A little bit ago I posted a letter from Mira that was asking for donations. Each year the Washburn Center for Children, where Mira works, sponsors a toy drive for the case management kids. This year, as anyone who read her plea knows, they had come up short in funding. They were only going to be able to purchase toys for about half of the kids, which left the case managers in the tough position of having to decide which of their clients should get toys. Since most of these families are low-income and really struggling, sometimes these toys are all that the children will be getting for the holidays. So Mira and all of the other case managers went out to try to collect donations. I just spoke with Mira today and learned that over the past couple of weeks they were able to raise over $3000 through both corporate and private donations. This was enough to cover not only all of the case management kids, but also EVERY single child that Washburn serves!! In such a challenging year for social services, this is truly a happy story that I am thrilled to be able to share.

In other news, I have one week left of classes and then it is finals week. I don't have any final exams, just a number of final papers due. I am all finished with my Program Evaluation final because my wonderful professor utilized an "installment plan", where we turned in drafts of the final paper over the semester. Therefore, I've been working on it all semester and revising after each draft was returned. Another final that is nearly complete is the one for my diversity class, which has been a semester-long headache. The final is a group presentation and 20-page paper involving the creation of a fictitious multicultural social service agency. Each group had to select a specific culture that we planned to develop services for. We first had to write a 12-page community mapping paper for that culture, which identified the various resources available to that culture, along with demographic information and cultural strengths, weaknesses and barriers to service. Then we had to prepare a 30 minute presentation which involves two simulations of a staff meeting where we are presenting information about culturally responsive service delivery for that culture, along with identifying a real-life community organization that we plan to collaborate with. The 20 page paper describes our made-up organization. My group chose to do the Somali culture, which most of you know is a huge population in the Twin Cities. I have learned a lot, but it's been a ton of work. Luckily we are nearly done. Our group presents on Monday and the final paper is due on the 14th. We have been utilizing the wonderful tool of Google Documents, which is basically like Microsoft Word except it is online and a group of people can have access to it. We can all go in on our own and add to the paper. It's worked out quite well.

My last two final papers are extremely similar. They both involve doing a client assessment and creating a case plan. One of them is a bit more involved, as it requires me to do a literature review on one of the client's issues, along with creating a genogram (sort of like a family tree) of the client and a whole bunch of other things. The other one is more like an actual assessment, where I go through the case history, presenting issues, overall functioning, etc. Then I have to do a DSM-IV diagnosis of the client and create a case plan. I've already gotten a good start on the more involved one. I still have to do the literature review, which means reading over a whole bunch of journal articles that I've collected. I plan to review the literature on how relational trauma affects a child's attachment. Relational trauma pretty much refers to some type of trauma in the child's important relationships. In the case of my client, the relational trauma involves parental neglect, substance abuse and mental illness. Typically relational trauma results in an insecure parent-child attachment, where the child is unable to learn important skills from the parent, such as self-regulation. They child also develops a poor inner-working model (IWM). We all develop an IWM throughout our life, that says what we think about ourselves and our relationships with other people. A child with a poor IWM might think of himself as being unlovable or not having value and probably doesn't trust other people or think that relationships will be positive.

This reminds me that I never wrote anything about attachment, which I said way back that I was going to do. Attachment theory is huge in children's mental health, and is something that I will probably refer to a lot. I'll make sure to get something written about it sometime soon.

In the meantime, I hope everyone is doing well and I'm looking forward to getting home again in just a couple of weeks!!