first day!

First day at work! When I got there I talked with my supervisor for about 20 minutes about the organization, about myself, and my requirements for the practicum. She then got a phone call that reminded her that she had home visit for a client evaluation in five minutes. She explained that the police had called her because they needed to evict an individual but the individual had a physical disability so they felt bad just throwing them out of their home. My supervisor explained that she never really got in touch with this individual for more than a few minutes to schedule this appointment so she really had no idea what was going on. So, needless to say, in the first 30 minutes of the practicum, I went on a home visit. It was a great experience to be able to tag along and see how home visits are done.

After that, we came back and she introduced me to the whole staff. There are so many people and I am so bad with names but I will learn soon enough. She then assigned me to one of the intake counselors to shadow for the rest of the day. He taught me how to assign different clients to the different case managers depending on their situation, how the whole intake process works and all the paperwork that goes along with that. I sat in on about 5 or 6 intake interviews. So, I basically learned the whole process that the client and the clients’ files go through before it goes to the case manager.

My first impression is very positive. Everyone was very friendly and helpful to me. I love the variety that I will be able to experience because the organization is so big and has so many different programs that it offers to its clients. It seems to have a great reputation around the city and has great statistics of getting homeless individuals into stable permanent housing. I think that I will be able to gain a lot of knowledge and experience even through just talking to the different people that work at the organization. I already feel like I have learned so much and I have only begun to get an idea of all the aspects and different programs involved in this organization. The only thing that was a little strange to me was that one of the lady’s that worked there did not want me to be outside to take the bus home. So she said I could come along and get a ride too. So they took me home. I don’t want to rely on always getting a ride so I am hoping that it will be safe for me to take the bus in general. I was not too worried about waiting for the bus outside until the lady made a big deal about it. We will see.