Junior Social Work Placement Interview....

Today, I went for my Junior Social Work Field placement interview. My placement coordinator emailed me last Thursday about an agency located in Stamford, CT that worked with the special needs population. The placement sounded very interesting and so she encouraged me to call and set up a meeting with the supervisor. My interview was at ARI of Connecticut with a man named Carey. This agency helps the special needs population learn how to be independent with in their own community. They do job placements, training classes as well. The interview went pretty well. By talking to Carey, I learned what my duties would be as an intern at ARI. My biggest fear of an internship would be spending 8 hours a week filing papers, making coffee, and anything else that is not related to my field of a social worker. Carey explained that I will have many different things to do for my internship. 50% of my time I will be working with another supervisor down in the production department (a department where their clients work in a mail room by folding papers and placing them in envelopes and getting them ready for the mail), I will then also act as an observer in a field work area where some of the more skilled special needs clients are doing landscaping or cleaning jobs out in the community and bascially observing how this process works, another item I will be doing is taking on my own client case to work with, and lastly do some readings and training on the special needs population. I will also do some observing in the classrooms to see how their training classes are ran for the special needs clientele. I am excited for all of this, but freaked out at the same time. I now this is normal only because it is different and to think that I will have my own client is probably the most scary thing I can think of right now. I just do not feel prepared enough, but I guess I will learn fist hand. I will start in early January, though, where as most of my other classmates for junior placement will not start until Feb or early March. The reason why I will be starting early is because with working with the special needs population, it is hard for them to understand why a worker is coming in and then leaving so quickly. Which is to be expected. My field placement will consist of 4 hours two days a week, so basically 8 hours a week until the month of May. I only have to put in 100 hours for my junior placement, but where I will be starting earlier, I will probably have a little bit more than that.