Sophie is in the A.B./M.S.S. combined degree program offered to undergraduate students at Bryn Mawr College. She is a first year M.S.S. student and is also completing her senior year at Bryn Mawr College as a psychology major and child and family studies minor. The A.B./M.S.S. program enables Bryn Mawr undergraduate students to begin their Master of Social Service during their senior year by transferring up to three undergraduate credits towards the M.S.S. degree. Learn more about the program here.
Where is your field placement?
My field placement this year is at Spectra Support Services in Broomall, Pennsylvania.
Can you briefly describe what a placement day looks like for you?
Spectra provides both therapeutic and behavioral services, and so my day will typically include a mix of both of those things. I do work with their day program which is for adults with autism and intellectual developmental disabilities, or IDDs. Sometimes I am shadowing staff and other times I’m doing direct work, and I lead a weekly art group with clients which has been really great. I also have been able to shadow music therapy sessions, which has been a great experience of both shadowing and sometimes participating in sessions. Depending on which day I’m in, I will shadow therapy sessions, some with clients that my supervisor is doing therapy with and some with other therapists on staff. This has allowed me to gain a wide range of shadowing experiences with children, adolescents, and adults who have a variety of clinical diagnoses and styles of therapy that are being used which has been very helpful to learn about. I also have two clients that I do direct work with, one of whom is an adult that I do CBT-style sessions with, and my other client is a child with whom I do social skills coaching.
What have you learned about yourself through this placement experience?
I would say that I have been able to develop strengths in areas that at the beginning of my placement I didn’t picture myself doing. Participating in multiple required trainings to do behavioral work made me intimidated by this kind of work at first, but I think once I got past the training stage, it was really about connecting with these clients and learning the best ways to support them. It has been really helpful to recognize not only that I am capable of doing this kind of work, but also that these are techniques that I am going to be taking with me in my future placement and clinical work experiences in terms of understanding the ways that our behavior is impacted by how we are thinking and feeling and the situations around us.
How have you grown as a social worker through this experience? Can you highlight specific skills you have gained?
My field liaison, supervisor, and task supervisor have all done a really wonderful job of giving me a wide variety of tasks across all of the different areas of social work that Spectra provides. In addition to more direct clinical work, I’ve also been able to do social work tasks such as finding resources for specialized cases, contacting agencies for referrals, and finding housing resources. I also got to do some work with their call log when people call Spectra in search of therapy. Everywhere has a very long waitlist so that has really been an exercise in managing people’s disappointment after telling them how long the waitlist is, and collecting their information so that they can be put on the waitlist. That was definitely a challenging experience, but it was also helpful to be able to develop skills of being able to handle these kinds of situations by compartmentalizing and recognizing that people’s emotions are not to be taken personally in those situations.
How has your classwork been relevant to your placement experience?
It has been helpful to recognize that our classwork serves to supplement the work that we’re doing in the field. I feel like I’ve really loved Foundation Practice because of the time that we get to discuss our field work and just hearing everyone else’s experiences has been so helpful and interesting. As we’re delving more into our concentrations and our classwork is getting more specific to what we’re looking to be doing, starting to take some of these clinical courses is making me feel excited about the upcoming year. I look forward to my placement next year which will be more specialized, as I now have a solid understanding of this work, not only through the experience that I’ve gained in the field this year, but also the knowledge I’ve gained in my classes.
What is your favorite part of the GSSWSR community?
The mutual support among students is one of my favorite parts of the GSSWSR community. I feel like with the people in my classes, we all support each other through the experience of being a first year in this program. Even though we’re all coming from different backgrounds and different stages in our lives, it has been great to see how we’re all unified in this experience and are able to support each other and use our different backgrounds to learn from each other. The breadth of experience and backgrounds of my fellow students is really impressive and I feel like we can use each other as valuable resources. For example, if I wanted to learn more about the child protective services (CPS) process, I know that we have some CPS workers in the program that would be more than happy to share their experience with me, and this holds true for anyone’s work, educational or personal background. I feel like in these relationships we develop with our fellow classmates, we get to talk about life outside of school and our field placements which is really refreshing and creates a strong sense of community.
How does the trauma-informed curriculum come up in your classwork and inform your placement experience?
The trauma-informed curriculum has been one of my favorite aspects of the GSSWSR program because I’m someone who is really interested in doing trauma-focused work. I’ve noticed that a lot of the articles we read in our courses take into consideration the ways in which our environments and experiences can have such a strong impact on how we’re functioning, and so I am very much aware of the trauma-informed approach in the curriculum and many of the class discussions we have. The trauma-informed perspective is very much present in the classroom and students and faculty are naming it and shaping our discussions around the shared understanding of how trauma plays out in various contexts. In my field placement, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to shadow sessions where clients are exploring how their own early and recent traumatic experiences shape their mental health. I’ve also gained a sense of how trauma informs the work Spectra does with the autistic and IDD population because we’re not that far from some practices that are very traumatizing for this client population, and so I think Spectra is very aware of this. Everyone is conscious of not activating those traumatic experiences for clients and being respectful and aware of potential triggers. I feel like that has been really important because you’re not necessarily going to find the same level of respect and a strengths-based perspective in all places that work with clients with autism, but just knowing how trauma-informed Spectra is and how their work is aware of and doing all the right things to address trauma has been great.
Where will you be for your second-year placement?
My placement next year will be at the Center for Counseling and Education in Marlton, New Jersey, and I’m going to primarily be working with children and adolescents which is my intended population so that’s very exciting. I’m also going to be able to get some great training in play therapy which I’m also really excited about because that’s also something I’m hoping to do after I graduate.