Utah DCFS Western Region Permanency

BYU provided me an amazing opportunity to spend the summer interning with the Utah Department of Child and Family Services.  I specifically got to work with the permanency team in Spanish Fork. . The permanency team is responsible for helping children in the community to be a part of safe, stable families. My daily activities have included making visits to the homes of families currently receiving services from the state to make sure the children are safe, documenting services being provided to clients, holding multi-disciplinary team meetings, attending court, accessing community resources, and much more. During this internship I realized the importance of having good foster care families in the community. I also learned about the court system and the importance of good legal representation. However, the most important things I learned about were self-care and working in a team.

Social work is an especially taxing profession because you give so much of yourself, your emotions, your heart, and your mental energy. It takes all of your internal resources to be able to help families heal. It was great getting to be a part of that process, but on days off, I had to learn to truly be off. I would leave my phone on silent, and not check emails or texts for the day. Then I would go hiking or spend time talking to friends. Taking the time to recharge and refuel allowed me to maintain enthusiasm for my work. Enthusiasm and positivity are important attributes because they foster sociability.

Social work is inherently social and a lot of the work I did on my internship involved getting to know many different types of people from all different professions. I got the opportunity not only to work with social workers, but also with lawyers, judges, foster parents, biological parents, kids, teens, therapists, police officers, doctors, nurses, IT personnel, and secretaries. All of these people have different strengths and as a social worker I got to help orchestrate their efforts to capitalize on those strengths. It takes a lot of work, but it’s also a lot of fun!

I would recommend an internship to anyone, as it has given me invaluable experience as well as excellent networking opportunities. This is the second internship that I have done through the BYU Internship office; both have been great experiences and have taught me different things. The real world experience has helped make my professional choices clearer and put me at ease that my career will be a good fit.