by Chris Hilburn-Trenkle
Practicum education is an integral part of every unlicensed social worker’s training, placing students in a work environment with professional caregivers and advocates. Each student pursuing a master’s degree in social work first takes on a generalized practicum assignment, and later chooses a practicum assignment specific to their area of interest — either in direct practice care (micro care) or community, management, and policy practice (macro care).
We spoke with two University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Social Work students to learn about their experiences working in a specialized placement.
David French is an advanced standing student in the School’s MSW program. After working in a micro placement through various community shelters, he found there were many systemic problems that he wanted to address through macro care. He currently works in the Inspired Lab and as an interventionist with the SUPER (Substance Use Prevention Education Research) program.
Walking through a day in the program
My week is very different. As an interventionist I facilitate a life-skills training class every Monday and Wednesday in the morning. Wednesday comes and I also do semi-remote work, doing literature review research for a repository that we’re putting together that addresses substance use tendencies, education, research with teens and parents. This research, this information that we’re compiling is for practitioners and parents and teenagers to better educate them on the substance use world.
What have you learned from your practicum assignments?
Substance use is larger than I thought. I wanted to research substance use recovery and treatment and the continuum after they’ve gone through their trials and tribulations and their hardships. Now I’m on the prevention side trying to prevent kids and people and teens, parents from using, and it’s kind of opened my eyes to a whole different world to it.
How does that affect your work moving forward?
I’ve always wanted to work in recovery but now I’ve grown more fond of the prevention side. It’s very important that we do the prevention work and make sure people are aware of being safe if they are using substances or what to look out for — what kinds of diseases, what happens mentally. It’s opened up a bigger world and I think going forward I will definitely be addressing more prevention-based programs for my career.
I want to look at the whole continuum but now I’ve realized the prevention aspect is a lot more beneficial than I realized prior to doing this placement.
Anything else to share about your assignment?
I couldn’t ask for a better team, the SUPER team. The practitioners are amazing. Dr. Tauchiana Williams, Dr. Trenette (Clark) Goings, Dr. Carey Evans, they’re all amazing, wonderful people to work with. I couldn’t ask for better mentors.
Maya Scott is an advanced standing student in the School’s MSW program focusing on direct practice. Scott chose to pursue micro care due to her interest in helping individuals on a personal, one-on-one basis. She is interested in behavioral health and the social determinants of health and is helping those in need through her work at the Duke Hospital Birthing Center.
Walking through a typical day in the program
When I first got there in the very beginning it was a lot of shadowing social workers … Now I assign myself the mommies who aren’t dealing with as severe of challenges. So, I might consult with a mommy who’s had challenges with anxiety or depression in the past or had issues with getting to prenatal appointments, so that’s what I do now. I’ll assign myself and consult with my supervisors. I’ll read their chart, take brief notes, go in and see them. That’s the bulk of it. Then I’ll write a note and see my next patient until the day is over.
What have you learned most since being at Duke Birthing Center?
I’ve learned more than I’ll be able to describe in detail. Aside from the ins and outs of medical social work, which provides a plethora of information on how to work in teams, how to work with individuals, what self-determination means and the perspective of health and well-being, managing implicit biases. Among those things I’ve learned how to understand people’s health conditions in a larger construct to where they live, who they connect with, what they have access to, and I can see certain trends of health conditions in certain populations and compare that to why other populations maybe don’t experience the same or experience different health outcomes. I get the insight on social determinants of health and how impactful they are in dictating the trajectory of people’s lives. I’m still learning how to provide that space and let people know they have a resource to ask for support whether they need it right then or not.
How will you apply this work moving forward?
My practicum is what I want to do in the future, so those nuances that I just described, I’ll apply them in my future job. Where I got placed is exactly what I want to do in life. This was a really great opportunity for me to know if this is something I want to do. I happened to be lucky that it was. Going beyond social work, I can take what I learned and do the best job impacting the system in a way where it benefits the lives of people. Sometimes systems implement things that benefit systems but they’re not looking at an individualized perspective … What I’ve learned has equipped me to be more competent in the sense that whatever I do in social work I understand the foundation of providing quality support and care.
Is there anything else that is important to know about your work?
Why I chose to work with moms is because I feel like society usually only applies value to women in the roles that they serve for other people. One of these roles being mom, and I use the word role very loosely. We don’t think about how moms are still people outside of caring for other people, and women in general. That’s really why I wanted to focus on moms in the population because I think they deserve support. Usually it’s expected to know how to be a caretaker in any aspect, not even just with moms. I think it’s really important to have somebody to bridge that and have a support person because we really can’t do it alone. Especially in society and in health care, there’s an individualized construct of me, me, me, but it really takes more than one person. So that’s why I chose to work with moms and I think it’s really important, going to health care in general, to look out for what people are facing outside the hospital because their lives don’t stop once they’re in the hospital.
