Next class we will focus on your ending field for the year. Briefly share the thoughts and feelings you are having about this ending and how you are addressing these feelings/endings with your clients and co-workers.
Week 11: – Termination
- April 7
Sweitzer, H. (2004) Traveling the Last Mile: The
Culmination Stage. The Successful
Internship. Brooks/Cole, Belmont. CA.
pp 263 - 279
Baum, N. (2011) Social Work Students' Feelings and Concerns
about the Ending of their Fieldwork Supervision. Social Work
Education 30(1), 83-97
The reading by Sweitzer states, that prior to termination there must be time to finish the work and not leave loose ends before the time is up. I have been working on this at my internship and with the group that I have been running. Just last week I debriefed with my coworkers to explain where the group is and I also asked them how they feel about continuing the group after I leave. My coworkers decided to continue this group and they plan to accompany me to the last meeting to inform the group members. Due to the nature of my internship, the clients I have worked with this year are very accustomed to having interns come and go so the termination of this group seems to be going smoothly. I feel that I have had a great experience with the group and I am very happy that although I will not be running the meeting, it will continue for the residents who have enjoyed attending. My experience at my internship and with my supervisor this year was very comfortable and rewarding. I learned a lot and I plan to take the knowledge with me into my career.
ReplyDeleteIn reading these articles about endings and termination I am reminded of just how much work there is left and how much I will be leaving behind. I leave in such a short amount of time and I finally feel like I began having breakthroughs with clients and now that time is over. I feel like this year was so short. Sweitzer (2004) states that, “It is equally important, though, to be clear with yourself and with clients about the work that remains.” A part of me feels like I will be dumping this left over work into the hands of the new intern or my supervisor for the summer. It seems to me that just when I begin making some real progress I need to hand over the work and may take months for the new person to catch up to where I was, if they catch up at all.
ReplyDeleteI am very excited about my new upcoming internship for my last year. Baum (2011) states that, “Most of those with a good/very good supervisory relationship were forward looking. They were eager to move on to new professional experiences and were concerned with the quality of the supervision they would have or the quality of the work they would do in the upcoming year.” I found it was very interesting that the individuals who had poor supervision or had bad experiences in their supervision were said to be “stuck I the past”. They did not seem to discuss much about their next year’s internships and did not refer to themselves as professionals. This is no surprise to me, then, that my awesome internship this year has left me craving another fantastic experience for this upcoming year.
While reading the articles, I began reflecting on my supervisory relationship and first year placement as a whole. I believe I have been begun terminating with the agency for a couple weeks now by informing colleagues of my departure date and transitioning out of the community patient visits.
ReplyDeleteBaum (2011) found that student’s responses about leaving their placement were closely associated with the quality of the supervisory relationship. Overall, I would report my supervision was good to very good. I think this is directly related to the quantity and quality of my supervision with multiple social workers. I fortunately had the privilege to have supervision with the my primary supervisor, the LCSW at the Hospice House, the Bereavement Coordinator, the Director of SW/SC, and the primary social workers overseeing the patients I visited with in the community/facilities. I was able to feel comfortable asking and bringing up questions, ethical dilemmas, and positive accomplishments to everyone who oversaw my work. This allowed me to have balanced supervision with many different perspectives.
During this termination phase from my first year internship, I begin to reflect on my growth and development as a social worker. Between the excellent supervision, supportive team, and patient and family interactions, I have to report my first year placement was a success. My significant growth has allowed me to feel confident about terminating from my position as social work intern.
My supervision has not been very good this year. Especially during the second half of the year. I have barely seen my supervisor actually. This may be reflected in some of the challenges that I am facing.
ReplyDeleteI am not as excited about next year's internship so perhaps I am just not as excited as others to move on. I have really enjoyed my current internship and clients. It has been very clinically focused. In fact, I think that I will stay on with them over the summer and into next year and work for them. My internship next year is more policy focused, and I am more interested in clinical work overall.
I am struggling to terminate with two of my clients. I have three clients. One is pretty young and I think she will just move on to another worker without much difficulty. However, the other two are teenagers and I have now worked with them for 8 months. They have shared a lot with me and we have built really good rapport. They are anxious about my leaving, and I am a bit anxious about it as well. In fact, it may be fueling my need/desire to stay on through the summer. I began talking about termination two weeks ago with one of my teens and the next week she went backwards with a lot of her behaviors and was really struggling. She exhibited behaviors that we made major progress around months ago. I am worried about who will take over these two cases when I leave and whether they will help these clients continue to be successful.
I noticed myself having some big reactions to the readings this week - specifically in trying to envision myself terminating at my site. In many ways I feel like terminating with my supervisor is going to be more important than terminating with clients because I feel like I have been doing more work with her than with the students. In the Sweitzer (2004) chapter the author talks about four important steps to take when terminating with clients, specifically taking care of unfinished business and dealing with everyones' feelings about your leaving. When I read this I instantly thought that this was more important for my supervisor than for clients. I enjoyed that the chapter discussed an array of placement sites and acknowledged that not all interns will be working directly with clients. I have often felt resistant of formal termination processes because at my site I don't have consistent clients that I work with. I am still at somewhat of a loss as to how to go about terminating at my site - I am eager to talk with my supervisor about what this has looked like in the past and what she anticipates. I am delaying my leaving so that I can stay through the end of May to be present for a significant event for my program. I think marking my leaving with that large event and having that be my concrete ending will be good, but at the same time I think it will make it easier for me to get lost in the hub-bub of the event and my leaving to get missed (which I am not sure how I feel about right now). I am also wondering what it will be like to have Lee and I terminate at different times or at different days since we are at the same site but at different times. I do feel reassured that my site is structured in a way that there are frequent endings with vacations and many of the kids have worked with interns before and know that we won't be there after this year. It feels a little more comfortable to end the semester because of that.
ReplyDeleteBaum (2011) talked about many students expressed a great deal of relief in being free from the necessary paperwork and reporting of their internship. I find this to be true and as the end of the semester draws to a close, I'm looking forward to a well deserved rest!
ReplyDeleteThere is a big difference between my first and second semesters at my internship. The first semester was really just learning about the agency and getting adjusted to being in school full time. My supervisor has been very supportive and I learned a lot from weekly meetings. The office is informal with my supervisor and 5 other therapists and so I benefited from many informal conversations throughout the course of the day. I would like to be able to call on my supervisor in the future, if there were ever a reason. I made a verbal agreement with my supervisor to stay on, once the internship ends, and get paid to continue with my 1 remaining client and her family for another month, until her sessions end.
Overall I am very much looking toward the summer and then next years internship as I feel like I learned a lot from the first year placement.
My internship was not the experience I had hoped for and I have been looking forward to my last day for a couple of months. I had really hoped for the opportunity to work with the many children who were on the at-risk list. Unfortunately , those kids only meet with the guidance counselors. Working with an out-reach social worker was not something I had planned on doing. When I originally got my placement I was so excited to work directly with children in the school setting. It didn't work out that way and I am greatly disappointed. However, I did get along with my supervisor. She did teach me a lot about the outreach system and how it works within the school. I learned about homelessness and the McKinney-Vento Act. I also have a new perspective on the challenges many families face in the Hampton Beach area. So many of the families are forced to live in seasonal housing and must move out every May before the rents double for the beach season. I have more compassion for those who don't have enough food to eat or money to put gas in their car. I don't have any clients to say goodbye to. I will miss Janine because she is a very nice person and we did have some fun working together. She is expecting her first baby in May so I will buy her a baby gift which will also be a parting gift as well. I don't like saying goodbye at all. I usually just slip out the back and hope no one noticed that I'm gone. Since this is my internship I will be forced to say goodbye and I think giving her the baby gift on my last day will help ease the uncomfortableness. I am really looking forward to my next years placement!
ReplyDeleteThe Sweitzer article brought up feelings of sadness regarding my internship. He mentions the termination of relationships and I don’t necessarily feel like I made any lasting or significant professional relationships at my internship. Many people have shifted positions or left the agency over the last nine months. It would have been nice to develop more relationships with my co-workers and peers, but that was not the case. I am also feeling stress around the fact that I only have one more year of having an internship to learn and grow as a social work student before entering the field as a professional! I understand that I will continue to learn and grow in my professional work experiences, but the fear of not having exposure to certain situations or opportunities for growth at my placement is somewhat disappointing. I am eager to feel that sense of freedom after ending at my placement. I enjoy the suggestion in the article for reflection of knowledge and experience that has been gained. I feel that I have learned a lot and gained a lot of confidence in my micro-level work. I learned that I really enjoy doing group work, which I never would have thought would be the case. I still do not think I want to do primarily direct care, but I do feel more confident in my abilities.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of termination is difficult due to the nature of my internship. This is something I have struggled with especially at the beginning of my internship. I would come back week-to-week and clients would be gone. Some clients would leave because of medical issues or they were kicked out of the facility. Some clients decided that they wanted to leave on their own. I struggled with this and I continue to because I’m unsure how to handle the process of termination in this situation. Terminating with my supervisor is going to be interesting. I’m not sure how that is going to play out, but I know it is something that needs to be addressed. Overall, I’m ready to end this internship and I’m looking forward to my placement for next year.
The article made me reflect on my personal realationships with my clients and co workers. I have started termination with many of my current clients, in the sense of answering their questions and determining if they feel they need on going therapy or if they feel they can use the tools they have learned in sessions to forgo therapy after termination with me. With the clients who have made great progress , I feel sad for the separation , but truthfully for the clients who I have struggled with I have happy. For the ending . In regards to my co workers I feel the work environment is so toxic and non supportive that I will only be missed for my work with client in the sense of now they will have to do more work in my absence .
ReplyDeleteThis is one of the topics where I feel as though my situation is unique compared with that of a typical first-year social work internship. While my “internship” position will be ending within the agency I am at, I will remain employed there, and will resume a full-time position at the bachelor’s level role. I do see some concepts I can identify with in the Sweitzer article, such as within “Taking a Self-Inventory.” While I will not be separating from the connections I have made with team members in my agency, I will be separating from the master’s level clinical role I have assumed for the duration of the school year. I enjoy reflecting upon areas where I feel I have displayed competence, and the ways in which I define competence.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, the specific work within my agency has promoted short-term, intensive work with families where I feel as though I have received a lot of exposure to termination. I am still, however, working with my first case that was referred to me in my master’s level clinician role. This case has, at times, felt like an embodiment of, and a parallel to my own clinical growth over the school year. Both the case and I have progressed slowly but consistently, and I am both happy and proud to have helped the family I am helping in the manner that I have. Ironically, it is scheduled to close at the end of April, and this had nothing to do with my internship ending then. I am interested in continuing to look at it through the three tasks defined within the culmination stage: identifying work left to be done, identifying my feelings and a place to express them, and planning for the future.