by Claire Cusick
In the spring of 2022, Emily Fonseca, MSW ’23, worked in a practicum internship, an assignment in the field that gives students the opportunity to work alongside professional social workers, at Carolina Outreach in Durham, where she was supervised by Leigh Strube, MSW ’13. We spoke with Fonseca and Strube to learn more about the practicum placement in the first installment of our practicum conversations series.
PURPOSE OF PRACTICUM
Leigh: “The purpose of practicum is to gain real-life experience within the field of social work, within a specialization. For us at Carolina Outreach, we want to be able to provide the specific kinds of learning and education around therapy, around social work, that help people to build the clinical skills we would want them to have if they were employed with us. It is an honor to connect with students and support them in this learning process to teach them about the culture at Carolina Outreach, and see if they are a good fit here.”
ABOUT LEIGH
Leigh: “This is where my heart is. This profession speaks to me in a way that nothing did before this. Because of my experiences in this field, and at UNC, it was very important to me to give back. I learned so much from my practicum instructors about the kind of social worker that I wanted to be. They were selfless and giving of their time, and because of them, I got so much out of it. When I felt ready – which took some time, three or four years – I wanted to give back. At Carolina Outreach, I’ve provided practicum instruction mostly within Intensive In Home (IIH) and Family Centered Treatment (FCT). And that’s how I met Emily.”
ABOUT CAROLINA OUTREACH
Leigh: “Carolina Outreach is a community-based mental health organization, with a big focus on teaching clinicians who enter our field to serve the community. There are many services here that we offer. We have an urgent care that provides first-time mental health treatment, and also treatment to people who are struggling emotionally but don’t want to be seen in the emergency room, or who could be better served outside of that setting. We provide outpatient therapy and we also have several enhanced services that meet with people in their home and community who without these services, would be at risk of placement outside of their home community.”
ABOUT EMILY
Emily: “I fell in love with family systems 20 years ago (in undergrad at Guilford College). And I thought that meant I was going to go the psychology route. Instead, I did a lot of coaching of adult learners in various settings. I love talking to people. I love learning their stories. I experienced two layoffs from the educational technology industry followed by a mental health crisis that shook up my world. I offer that because I think more people talking openly about that stuff makes folks feel less alone.”
WHAT MADE EMILY DECIDE TO PURSUE AN MSW DEGREE
Emily: “And I just kept thinking, ‘What have I always loved?’ And what I’ve always loved is families. What I’ve always loved is family systems. What I’ve always loved is volunteer work, giving back to the community, holding really good space for people to process through hard stuff. And I Googled social work programs and the Triangle and the UNC program popped up … Because I had always said, ‘I will not go back to graduate school and spend all that money unless there’s a door I so desperately want to get behind that I can’t get behind without letters after my name.’ And so that made me go. I started in August of 2020.”
EMILY’S JOURNEY TO THE PRACTICUM AND FCT
Emily: “I still remember that Ronni (Zuckerman) stopped me. She stopped the conversation, and she was like, ‘Okay, I know you think you want to work in a gender clinic. I want you to tell me the core components of what you want out of a specialization place. And I want you to start from the ground up: tell me what you want and what you absolutely don’t want.’
I told her I wanted a supervisor who loves to teach and supervise people. I want someone who’s passionate about social work. I told her that I’m fascinated by families and family units – even my own family and how I grew up and my own family now. And she said, ‘I think you should work with Leigh at Carolina Outreach, and Family Centered Treatment.’ I had never heard of it.
I started researching, and I realized, it’s a treatment modality that I would have written if I could. It is the ideal. Everything I believe should be true about therapy is in FCT. It’s designed around what’s best for the family. And I got accepted. Then I went to coffee with Leigh, and we fell in love — professional love — with each other. We both were like, ‘I get to work with you!’ Leigh is a lot of the reason I accepted this position.”
LEIGH MEETS EMILY/LEIGH’S APPROACH TO SUPERVISING PRACTICUM STUDENTS
Leigh: “You are the fourth person that I’ve been honored to provide an internship to through Family Centered Treatment. Every year I go back to Ronni and tell her what I need in an intern. She is an amazing matchmaker. She did a really good job with this match. And now, knowing your history, it makes even more sense. You came to that coffee (shop) to interview me as much as I was interviewing you. I realize now, you were looking for something very specific.”
EMILY’S EXPERIENCE AT CAROLINA OUTREACH, ACCORDING TO LEIGH
Leigh: “With Emily, in our family-centered treatment program, we asked for her to learn how to provide co-therapy with one to two families. We asked for her to join in the team process so that she could learn how to give and receive feedback within a case consultation and support that process as a member of a team. Often, there’s a couple of specific sessions within family-centered treatment. There’s one called a structured family assessment, which has to do with building a genogram with a family and then giving and receiving feedback. And that specific session requires two therapists, and we oftentimes would ask our interns to be the second on that, so they can get experience and support their fellow clinicians. In return for this rich clinical experience, and because Family Centered Treatment has a heavy auditing requirement, we ask for help in managing and organizing that data.”
EMILY’S EXPERIENCE AT CAROLINA OUTREACH
Emily: “I was largely based out of (the) office in Durham. I wanted to be around people. I set myself up in the office every internship day. I was really confident and excited to get started. There is a training program that you need to do before you ever talk to a client, which is called Wheels of Change. Because I had such deep work experience and experience working with people, I was able to join as a co-therapist on my second day. Not to provide therapy. I was able to go and watch and observe and debrief with her, but not provide therapy. But that’s only because of my extensive history that they felt confident with me joining.”
HOW EMILY CONTINUED TO ADVOCATE FOR HERSELF DURING THE PRACTICUM
Leigh: “Our internships in the beginning are heavy on training, which is online and self-guided. It can be a little isolating. We’re putting more structures in place to support interns so they can connect in person. But I do think that any traditional internship experience for the first month, it’s just a lot of learning. Emily, I think you knew what you wanted. You pushed through the training, and spoke up and said, ‘I really want these shadowing experiences as quickly as possible.’ And because of your advocacy, we were able to make that happen a little more quickly.”
Emily: “Yeah, I definitely pushed, and I think part of that was just being an adult with a ton of work experience under me. And knowing how to relate to people, and being confident in myself that I could shadow, that my learning would be so much deeper and richer if I shadowed while I was going through the training.”
WHAT EMILY LEARNED
Emily: “The biggest overarching thing I got was a job I adore. I was able to get a job. Because of my previous experience, toward the end of the internship, I was able to transition into a paid qualified professional role, which meant I could get paid. And then once I got my license, I was able to assume a full-time clinician role.”
WHAT LEIGH GAINED
Leigh: “Emily, you came into this, already knowing you wanted to do child and family work. Along the way, we had a lot of discussions about gender, about work ethic, about how to do this kind of work long term, and how to structure boundaries around it. What I loved about our supervisions was that we were able to dig in and really get creative about how to approach the work that you were doing. It’s always fun for me to be able to have conversations that are a little bit deeper, like peeling back the onion, like ’how do we help a family get to a certain place, let’s look at all of the pieces and see if we can put them together in a different way.’ What’s fun to me is when I meet with an intern and I can just feel their excitement about getting to do this work. It’s so energizing to be able to work with somebody who’s really passionate about being able to work with children and families and individuals who need support. It’s a lot of fun.”
