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). Students engage in 400 hours of work during their generalist placement and 600 hours during their specialized placement.
This semester dozens of MSW students are working in a direct practice practicum placement administering clinical therapy. We spoke with two of these students — Erin Smith and Shawnesi Russell — to find out more about their placement, what they’ve learned and more. This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Erin Smith is a second-year MSW student working at Oak City Psychology in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Can you walk me through learning about this opportunity?
I had Director of Well-Being Karon Johnson last year; she was my practicum seminar instructor. She knew that I was really interested in direct practice, providing face-to-face therapy. She was also in charge of matching me with my practicum this year.
I’m at Oak City Psychology, which is in North Raleigh. We focus on eating disorders, the LGBTQIA+ community, and we see a wide array of different things. I get paid for my practicum this year, which is amazing. I have a few clients of my own, and the way that I applied was through the internship track, where we find our practicums. I had a lot of conversations with Karon about what I wanted, what I thought was most valuable for me. I did have some history before coming into the program of counseling work, so I wanted to utilize the experience that I had and be able to get a lot of growth with how I do therapy.
What would you say is a typical day for you at Oak City?
I have three regular clients right now. I see them on a weekly basis. I see two on Wednesdays and one on Fridays. That’s a mix of virtual and in-person. Normally, I’ll go in, check my agenda for the day. Because it’s part of my practicum, I’ve done a lot of reading up on therapy, which has been helpful.
I also put together a resource list for the practice, bringing in social work aspects to a therapy practice that has no other social workers, which has been very valuable for them and as a learning process for me.
One of the big projects I’ve put together with Dr. (Kim) Benton (Erin’s task supervisor) is developing an intake program for the practice. Before, it was up to the clients to figure out which clinician would be the best fit for them. I’ve headed up brief 30-minute sessions with every single new intake patient that we have. We put together a list of questions that we feel are relevant to people who are coming into therapy, and I can give them a rundown of what therapy looks like if they’ve never been in therapy before. Through that process I also match them with the appropriate clinician I think would work best with them. That’s been a great experience. That takes up most of my Fridays at the practice.
How do you feel that you’ve been supported by Dr. Benton and other staff members at Oak City?
They’ve been so amazing. This is their first year with a UNC intern. They’ve had previous interns from the William & Mary clinical mental health counseling program.
She (Dr. Benton) has such a heart for clients and for people in a very similar way that social workers do. I’ve really used her for supervision, along with Clinical Assistant Professor Chris Toenes—my MSW practicum supervisor. I meet with him once a week as well and he helps me with code of ethics work, any ethical questions that come up, and we also talk about different modalities and therapeutic approaches.
Everyone at Oak City is on the same page: “We want therapy to be accessible even though we’re in private practice. We want it to be easily understandable for people. If we have clients that might not want to use their insurance, try to figure out a way to make sure they still get the access to therapy that they need.”
What have been your biggest takeaways during your time with Oak City?
It’s been a wonderful learning experience, and I think I’ve already grown so much in how I practice. My practicum last year was case management and not a lot of clinical work. This year it’s been nice to be in the therapy room face-to-face with people, and I’m in the therapy room on my own. It is up to me to apply all the things that we’re learning in class and that I’m learning from Dr. Benton.
The biggest takeaway so far is that therapy is a growing process for the clinician as well. Particularly for new clinicians. There’s a lot of reflection that has to happen for you when you’re seeing your first few clients, and that can be hard to come to terms with, that you’re not the expert. You’re there to listen and apply what you’ve learned.
How do you feel like this work will benefit you as a social worker moving forward?
It’s an invaluable experience to be able to do therapy as a clinician before you’re licensed and having that practice and being able to take things back to your supervisors and your co-workers and talk through these things before you’re on your own.
It’s also amazing that I’m able to be in a private practice situation where I can already start building my client load for when I graduate. Learning the ins and outs of how to do private practice, how to market yourself, how to do all the financial aspects around billing: We are responsible for some of those aspects. It’s nice to see the business side of things as well, as someone who might be interested in going into private practice.
Shawnesi Russell is a third-year MSW student working at Anchor Perinatal Wellness, also in Raleigh, N.C.
Can you walk me through how you learned about this opportunity?
I came into UNC School of Social Work knowing I wanted to work with perinatal care and maternity. Clinical Assistant Professor Sasha Frinzl reached out to me and stated that there were two new opportunities for placements geared toward my interests.
I applied for both and got both. For my fall to spring internship, I chose Anchor Perinatal Wellness. I had two interviews with the owners and the operators of the organization, three individual women who pulled together parts of their individual practices to create this program.
What’s a typical day like for you at Anchor?
I go on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Friday. On Mondays, I typically get there at 8:30 a.m. and get the group room ready. All clients are given a check-in sheet just to see where they are mentally and physically and to see if there’s anything they would like to talk to us about. We have a morning meeting around 9:15 a.m. to talk about anything that happened over the weekend (for on-call workers) or the previous day.
Groups start at 9:30 a.m. There are three groups, and they’re split in-person and virtual, from 9:30—10:30 a.m., 10:30—11:30 a.m., and 11:30 a.m.—12:30 p.m. The groups are very different. We do a lot of CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), DBT (dialectical behavior therapy), and ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy). We just started doing solution-focused therapy. We do a lot of parent attachment groups, self-identity groups, boundary groups, and emotional regulation.
We meet around 1:30 p.m. to go into a treatment team, where we talk about in-person or virtual groups. Every two weeks the clinic does EPDS (Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale), which is a depression screening, and an anxiety screening. We keep track of those scores, so every two weeks we look at the scores they had previously versus the scores they just submitted.
After the treatment team is over, I see a client on Mondays from 2—3 p.m. From 3—5 p.m. we have a walk-in clinic.
How have you been supported by your practicum supervisor and other staff members at Anchor?
They’re really engaged with letting me try new things. They see what I’m interested in and what I think I need exposure to, and they allow me to make my own way. I just picked up a new client and started doing new groups instead of just the one group I was doing every Friday. They’re very helpful in talking me through the process.
My supervisor is getting her DSW (doctor of social work) right now, so she and I meet every Friday and bounce off each other about what she’s learning in her DSW program and what I’m learning at UNC and how I can apply that to the internship.
What have been your biggest takeaways during your time at Anchor?
There is little support around pregnancy and postpartum for perinatal mental health disorders. It’s a very acute population, and it’s a large population. Our wait list is very long. I’ve never experienced seeing this side of maternal care before. I’ve never (before) seen an organization put together an intensive out-patient program and support women and families that are experiencing these mental health disorders and working with them to get referrals such as if an in-patient visit is needed or if they need medication and getting them the resources they need.
How do you feel like this work and perspective will benefit you as a social worker moving forward?
This is the work I want to do, so I’m glad to be able to see it first-hand, see what it takes and what it entails. There are things I’ve learned that I can apply to my classroom learning as well as applying it to the people around me with support and resources.
I’m being exposed to things I’ve never been exposed to, like perinatal loss, and I’m learning how to be a clinician. That’s my greatest benefit.
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