The Human Services Internship Experience

Helping Students Find Their Way

Marianne R. Woodside

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781483377865
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Sociología

The Human Services Internship Experience: Helping Students Find Their Way aims to help students in field-based courses bridge theory and practice during their internships. The goal is to show students how to apply their academic work in a real-world setting and to confirm and expand their identity as human service professionals.

PART I Introduction to the Internship Experience

1 Defining the Internship

• Part I Introduction to the Internship Experience
  • Chapter 1 Defining the Internship
  • Chapter 2 Assessing Your Readiness for Internship
  • Chapter 3 Setting Up Your Human Service Internship
  • Chapter 4 Engaging in Internship During the First Week or Two
• Part II Involving Yourself in Human Service Work
• Part III Expanding Your Skills
• Part IV Concluding the Internship

Reading this chapter will help you do the following:

• List the purposes of this textbook, The Human Service Internship Experience: Helping Students Find Their Way.
• Describe the primary participants in the human service internship experience.
• Define the terms that relate to the internship.
• Describe the context of the internship from the perspectives of three human service-focused professional organizations.
• Describe the internship experience for the human service academic program’s description, program handbook and course description, and faculty-developed syllabus.
• Define the term collaboration.
• Outline the ways collaboration enhances professional growth and development.
• Learn about the motivations of Alicia, Lucas, and Tamika, to study human services.
• Learn about the faculty and site supervisors’ perspectives about human service internship experiences.
• Describe the tips that Gwen provides for collaboration in human service professional practice.

Welcome and Introduction

Welcome to the world of human services and, specifically, the internship experience! Preparing for and beginning this experience marks an important point in your journey toward becoming a human service professional. By now, you have completed much of your coursework and you are ready to assume, under supervision, responsibilities within a human service organization or agency setting. This textbook assists you as an intern to (a) develop a strong professional identity; (b) work within an agency environment; (c) use ethical and multicultural perspectives in human service delivery; (d) use supervision effectively; (e) develop your knowledge, skills, and values to effectively perform the multiple roles of the human service professional; (f) successfully conclude your internship; and (g) transition from intern to human service professional.

The primary purpose of this chapter, Chapter 1, helps you understand the internship and your place in it. We begin this chapter with a brief introduction to three of your peers, Alicia, Lucas, and Tamika. These three students are studying to become human service professionals, and more important, they are getting ready to begin their internship experiences. Throughout this text, they will serve as one of the many guides you will have during internship. After your brief introduction to Alicia, Lucas, and Tamika, we present to you the primary perspectives in the internship experience. First, we introduce the participants in the internship, and then we define the common terms you will encounter as an intern. Next, we provide other perspectives of the internship, including how professional organization and human service programs describe it. In addition we look at academic program documents such as the human services program handbook or the internship handbook, the course description, and a course syllabus that detail what the specific intern experience should be. Each of these sources of information helps you identify the goals and functions of the internship. We then explore the collaborative nature of human services and the internship learning environment. As we discuss the importance of collaboration, we also introduce Sue, an internship student, and describe her experiences related to collaboration.

At the conclusion of the chapter, you meet Alicia, Lucas, and Tamika again. They share with you thoughts about their motivation to study human services and their personal readiness for the experience. You also meet Dr. Bianca, a human service faculty member, and Ms. Bellewa, a site supervisor. We end the chapter by introducing Gwen, a human service professional who will share with you tips on how to collaborate in your internship setting.

Now let’s meet Alicia, Lucas, and Tamika.

Meeting Alicia, Lucas, and Tamika

As we stated earlier, Alicia, Lucas, and Tamika are also human service students beginning their internship experiences. We asked them to briefly introduce themselves by providing information about their family backgrounds.

©iStockphoto.com/Sylverarts

Alicia

Hello! My name is Alicia, and I am the single mother of a little boy called Thomas. I am excited to share my story with you. I am going to begin with a brief introduction and then later in the chapter, I will tell you more about myself, and my motivation to study human services. I was born and raised in a small town in Colorado, called Glenwood Springs. My family is of English and German descent. I was raised in a rather large family. My family is core of who I am and how I relate to the world; they are foundational to many of my choices and experiences and have influenced the way I come to view and understand life.

I was raised by my mother and stepfather, who married when I was very young. I am the youngest of five siblings. Both my parents worked long and hard hours in order to support my siblings and me, providing us with everything we needed. Although my stepbrother and stepsister primarily lived with their mother, they were regularly included in the family life my brother, sister, and I experienced. My parents raised my siblings and me with values that were woven into our everyday lives.

Written by Allie Rhinehart and Dareen Basma, 2015. Used with permission.

©iStockphoto.com/Sylverarts

Lucas

Hello! I hope you are having a blessed day! My name is Lucas, and I want to give you an overview of who I am and a little of my background such as where I came from. I am a Hispanic male, or to be more specific, I am a Puerto Rican. I have an older stepbrother and stepsister and a younger brother. In my family system, I am a first-generation college student because my parents and siblings neither attended a university nor obtained a degree beyond high school. Even though my parents lacked an advanced education, they taught my siblings and me the principles of Christian beliefs as a method of teaching and education.

Written by Jorge Roman, 2015. Used with permission.

©iStockphoto.com/Sylverarts

Tamika

Hi there! It’s nice to meet you! My name is Tamika, and I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself. I am African American and come from a very small family; I am an only child and my parents divorced when I was 9 years old. I come from an interesting family system; my parents remained best friends after splitting up, and so my nuclear family is still intact in its own unique way. I am extremely close to both of my parents, and they have been among my greatest supporters!

I have lived in several places throughout my life, which I think has contributed to my value of independence and my desire to experience new cultures. Here in the U.S., I have lived in Illinois, Arkansas, Michigan, New York, and now Tennessee. For several months during my junior year of college, I studied abroad in London, which was a fabulous multicultural experience! I spent most of my childhood in a small town in western Michigan, which is where I call home. My family lived about 15 minutes from Lake Michigan, which was great in the summer, but not so pleasant in the winter!

As I mentioned, I have a great relationship with each of my parents and have been close to them all of my life. I think that, as an only child, I spent more time with my parents than most kids do, and I grew up valuing their opinions above those of most other people I encountered. As a result, I was probably somewhat sheltered, but I also think it contributed greatly to my ability to withstand peer pressure. I never felt much of a need to conform to my peers or to base my self-worth on their opinions, which has allowed me to maintain a fairly healthy self-image (most of the time, anyway; I am still human, after all).

Written by Brittany Pollard, 2015. Used with permission.

Alicia, Lucas, and Tamika shared information about their families; this is an important consideration for how we think about others and how we help them. It is also one of the reasons that the human service internship is a different experience for each student enrolled. In this text, you will write a story about your internship that is uniquely yours. In Exercise 1.1, you can begin this story by writing about yourself, a brief summary of who you are. You can use the summaries written by Alicia, Lucas, and Tamika as models.

Now it is time to think about the world of the human service internship. We begin by describing the primary perspectives of the internship. Box 1.1 describes the organizational framework of this next section.

Exe...