I've been working for Mercy's Chosen Children for a year now. Wow, how time flies by! I've learned so much this past year in this field of social work (probably more than in my 4 years at Covenant!). I was hired to do the office management and recruitment. I was (and still am) in charge of answering the main phone line, answering questions and recruiting potential foster & adoptive families. The first couple months were rocky and it felt like almost every conversation I had with a potential foster parent or even our current foster parents ended with me saying "I think that is right, I don't know. I will have to call you back". Thankfully that chapter is over and I feel like I have a much better handle on everything. We moved to a new and more spacious office last fall and that made my job a lot easier with organizing the files and folders and the gazillions of paperwork we have to shuffle through.
So, now my role in the agency is changing slightly. I'm now an official case manager (I have my own business cards and everything!), as well as, continuing most of my office management tasks. Now that I have a handle on the office management, it no longer takes up my 40 hours a week so I am ready to do more than paper shufling. I'm now in charge of the placements of 6 foster children (cute as can be!) and their foster homes. Like my co-workers I've been trained to teach the state's 20 hour foster and adoptive parent certification seminars which we all co-teach together 3 times a year. I've just been promoted as the case manager who is in charge of home assessments. I'm going to be the one who is in charge of assessing each potential foster and adoptive family after they go through our certification training. I conduct several interviews and learn all about their family and why they want to be foster/adoptive parents. (For a sociology person, this is soooo fun! Sociology minded peeps love knowing what make people tick!) I then take all their information and references, back ground checks, etc. and write up an assessment document (8-12 pages) to submit to our supervisor for approval to our agency.
Phew!!! I'm tired just typing that all out! Anyway, it's really exciting to do "a real job" and be in the "real world" and making a difference in family and children's lives! Sometimes I feel inadequate to do what I do, but I'm gaining confidence each day and my co-workers and boss have full support in me. God has really opened up such a wonderful opportunity for me here and I'm happy to be a part of such an amazing organization. For kicks, our website (I'm the designer) is
http://www.mercyschosenchildren.org
