The Social Work department’s field placement program requires all senior social work majors to acquire 420 hours of field experience before graduation to better prepare them for their occupations.
Social work is a broad field with several career paths to choose from, including medical, administrative, non-profit organizations, child services and more. Brittney Jordan, a senior and an intern at the Department of Human Services, said she wants to eventually work for a non-profit organization.
In her current job, Jordan shadows and assists social workers who are called to investigate reports of child abuse or neglect. The process starts with a call to the child abuse hotline, usually by a teacher or counselor reporting an unusually high number of absences from school. When the call is made and the report is filed, the case is sent to a social worker in the area who will investigate it further.
“Once we get the report, we have 72 or 24 hours to make contact with the alleged offender and the alleged victim,” Jordan said. “There are a lot of parent-child cases where we’ll interview the kid and drug test the parent.”
If the parent tests positive for drugs, it is the social worker’s job to find alternative living arrangements for the child. A majority of the calls made from White County are for neglect and are usually drug related.
Jordan said the internship is very hands on. There were a number of instances where she was responsible for children who were recently taken out of a dangerous environment.
“They really let the interns get involved,” Jordan said. “There are some things, by law, that we’re not allowed to do, but they let us come and follow them and participate.”
