A Day in the Life of a Gladney Intern

BLOG ENTRY #6: Home study ALONEEEE?! It’s really kind of funny how I thought I’d never be able to do a post-placement visit on my own and literally three days later I get offered one. I am so excited!

BLOG ENTRY #5: Supervised Post-placement Home Study Today I got offered to chance to shadow a supervised post-placement visit with Amy Curtis, the department head of family services and international adoptions. We were to meet with a family who had already adopted a child and just needed a follow up visit. It is important to have a follow up visit after the adoption in order to make sure the family and child are adjusting well to each other. Amy did the majority of the talking as I watched the interview between her and this family. This was a great experience to see what all a social worker or case worker is looking for in adoptive parents, ‘child-centered logic’ being one of them. This is the method of thinking that puts the child’s needs at top priority across the board to make sure they are getting everything they need. Overall, this home study went very well. The family was kind, compassionate, and demonstrated a loving and gentle parenting style. I was excited to be able to c...

BLOG ENTRY #4: Domestic Adoption Orientation When I went to the domestic adoption orientation one of the first things we did was break into smaller groups, I had no idea that the process of adoption was so involved. The birthmothers get to pick who their babies will be adopted by, the parents have the ability to state a preference of who their birthmother could be, and they the match is overseen the whole time by a case worker who helps the matching process along. It is even recommended that the adoptive parents create a booklet to offer the birthmothers so that they can visually express who they are as a couple. And it was a truly unique experience to be able to hear from a birthmother herself, to understand the struggle she was going through. There were two who volunteered from the dorms at Gladney for this month’s panel and they were taking questions from the audience. They were asked many questions and volunteered their answers willingly, but the overall theme of their a...

BLOG ENTRY #3: Settling In This week I learned I am going to be working in Family Services with Camille. So that I would know more about the agency, we took a tour. Gladney is a large facility, the tour must have taken 30 minutes! But I was able to meet the majority of the staff, see all of the different departments (Family services, Domestic, International, New Beginnings, ABC , Post Adoption), and view the vault to learn about the involved filing systems.   Everyone has been so nice and welcoming here, I am very excited to begin work! I was notified last week that there would be a conference on Thursday morning where all of the interns would have the opportunity to meet the President of Gladney, Frank Garrott. I may have been a bit nervous at first but after meeting everyone, I felt like I was really a part of the agency. The President Frank Garrott took a keen interest in learning who we all were and where we were coming from in our lives. He even told us a little bit a...