My name is Paige and I had the privilege of spending my last
semester of college as a social work intern with Family Life Services. As a Longwood University social work student I
was required to complete two internships.
I completed my 180-hour junior year internship with a local Department
of Social Services. I learned a lot at
DSS, but since the day I decided to be a social worker I knew I wanted to work
in the field of adoption. Since I wanted
to come home to do my internship, my advisor told me about Family Life
Services. She knew about my values and
felt that this agency was a perfect match for me and she was right! I went for
an interview with J.J. in December and started my internship in January.
If you
don’t already know, Family Life Services is such an amazing adoption
agency. I learned immediately how much
they value and care for each and every birth parent and adoptive family. During my time at FLS, I was able to meet
birth parents, prospective adoptive couples, families who went through the
domestic adoption process, families who went through the international adoption
process, and I also worked with the staff and residents at the Liberty Godparent Home. Needless to say, I was
exposed to every element of adoption and I absolutely loved it!
Right away Deanne started letting me
work more independently than I had even anticipated. After shadowing her and Rachel on a few post
placement visits, I was able to start doing these visits on my own. FLS works with the sweetest, most caring,
Christian families and seeing the pure joy on their faces during these visits
touched my heart. My favorite experience
was seeing an adoption placement. Seeing
a couple that had waited so long to be parents, holding their new baby was just
amazing. I wish I could experience
placement day every day! I learned
quickly though, that with adoption, there’s also a sense of sadness. I shadowed Rachel during birth mother
counseling and went with her to the hospital several times to see birth mothers
after they gave birth. Amongst the
happiness of adoption, I think it’s quick for many of us to forget that while
others are celebrating, the birth family is grieving. This experience was the most challenging part
of my internship.
I had to go
back to Longwood three times during this semester for Senior Seminar (even
though I would have much rather been at FLS).
This is where all the senior social work students get back together and
discuss how their internships are going, give presentations, and turn in
papers. As we went around the room to
share, many of my peers had complaints about their internships, but when it was
my time to share I gladly talked about my experiences and was happy to state
that I had no complaints; I love my internship!
I was always the student in my social work classes to write research
papers on adoption and did many presentations about adoption and teen
pregnancy. I can’t tell you how many
papers I wrote or how many presentations I did on adoption, but I learned more
this semester, at Family Life Services, than I ever did my three and a half
years in classes (just don’t tell my professors!).
I will
forever be grateful for the few months I spent getting to know and working with
Deanne, Rachel, Rose, and J.J. and the birth mothers and adoptive families I
had the pleasure of meeting and working with.
I will continue to pray for each and every one of you and will miss you
all!
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