From UConn to KidSafe

Dar here!

I hope you all didn’t miss me to much but I have been pretty busy training the Noobs (new LVC tour leaders), getting homework done, and with my new internship!! (Yay Me! lol)

During the summer I set a goal to find an internship for the Fall and Spring semesters. Some of the things that I looked for in an internship included location, how it related to what I wanted to do upon graduating and if I would have a lot of hands on experience. Many friends have worked with organizations that had them filling out or filing documents and that was something I definitely did not want to do. Not to sure where to start I decided to research more information about organizations that I found at UConn’s Career for the Common Good Job Fair. Although the organizations at the Fair all did great services for the community I just knew that they weren’t for me so I moved on to the Psychology department. There they had a large book of all the places that other students had previously interned and brief descriptions of what they did while they were there – that’s how I found out about KidSafe.  

KidSafe is a non-profit organization, established in 1981 that works to break the cycle of child abuse and neglect by developing, promoting and implementing programs and services within the Rockville, Vernon, Manchester, and nearby communities. KidSafe is funded by the Exchange Clubs in Connecticut, Department of Children and Families (DCF), Corporate Grants and Foundations, Municipalities and private donations.  Some of the programs that they offer include, Transportation Services, which negotiates special rates for any travel statewide that takes a large amount of time for children and parents, Supervised Visitation, Family/Couples/Individual Counseling Services, as well as Parent Education and Special Training program.

So far during my time at KidSafe I have mainly been working with the Youth and Parent-Aide program. The Youth program is mainly for at-risk youth that live in the Rockville area.  It includes a Teen Center that provides the youth with a safe, drug free alternative to the streets where they can play games like basketball and pool, express their artistic ability through simple arts and crafts, and hang out to watch a movie.

Currently a new project is in the works for the Youth Program to start a mentoring program that I am excited to be a part of this semester. The Parent-Aide program is a home-based program where caseworkers and specially trained Volunteer Parent-Aides (That’s me!…well it will be me in a few weeks) are assigned to at-risk  families to offer support, education, guidance, a positive role model and advocacy.  Since I have only been there a few weeks I have just been doing a  lot of training and practice situations with some of the other interns. During our training sessions we have watched parenting videos such as 1, 2, 3,Magic! That not only shows parents better disciplining skills but better ways to build strong relationships with their children.  We also practiced interviewing new clients which I actually enjoyed doing but it made me realize that I would need to learn how to write a lot faster then I do now. After training I will be shadowing caseworkers and then hopefully getting my own cases.

I am really excited about everything that I will be doing with KidSafe and I could not have possibly asked for a better boss (well besides for Meg, Pam and Renea at the LVC of course ). Mary Burke is funny and is so easy to talk to. She answers all my questions with great detail, is so well versed about the field, and is very passionate about what she does. If you would like more information about KidSafe visit their website @ KidSafeCT.org or contact them at 860-872-1918.

Can’t wait to really get started!!