Thursday, August 30, 2007

Reporting for Duty

Well, I've just about finished my first week of my job. To refresh you, I'm a state employee with OKDHS in Child Welfare. Basically, I'm a social worker. I work with abused and neglected children to get them reunited with their families if possible and if I can't do that, I help place them in foster families and sometimes adoption.

I think if I could somehow know what a superhero felt like, this would be similar. You can't help but feel like you're making a difference when you're ensuring the immediate safety of children and sometimes their parents.

Days involve visits to court, visits to parents/children/foster families, documentation like you wouldn't believe, and setting up preventative services.

Unfortunately, I cannot disclose details of cases I've been a part of, but let me tell you that I have some great and heartbreaking stories just after 2 days in the field. (I've done computer training the other 2)

I'm thinking about requesting a switch to the intake side of child welfare. I'll keep you up to date about what's up but for now, i'm going to enjoy "jean day" at work tomorrow, read some books for training, and enjoy having a day off Monday! WOOP!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is "jean day" in honor of Jean Gordon, a woman who gave her life to social service in Louisiana? When it's "dorothy day" that will be funny because dorothy's last name actually is "day". Hope you are enjoying your day in honor of Jean!

Harry Hopkins

jessy burton said...

i'm really proud of you.

Amanda Fortney said...

that's awesome! it seems like such a perfect fit for you.

Kristen Cowan said...

I'm glad you are liking you job :)

Anonymous said...

Hey Cara, randomly found your site from the comments on Ben Rogers' site, but I'm glad I found it because I wanted to tell you that your song at church yesterday morning was amazing and really spoke to my heart. Thanks so much for sharing it with us.

-Audra