Abby Hannon

Responsibilities

During my internship, my main responsibilities were going to court hearings, transporting kids to and from visits and appointments, conducting supervised visits, and going on home visits with other social workers. There were also some points during my internship where I had to upload files and documents into different websites to update client's profiles. There were also times where I had to call clients, and even transport parents to and from visits if they did not have reliable transportation.

Accomplishments

My greatest accomplishment during my internship experience would be building strong rapport's with the kids. Being a positive person that these kids could trust was really important to me. I would work with kids ages 1-17, the time I spent transporting them or supervising their visits allowed me to converse with them and build a connection that some kids may not have with other people.

Learning experience

A lesson that I learned is "You can only put in as much work as the client does." People think social workers are supposed to work miracles for everyone. But in reality, if the clients don't want to put in the work, there is only so much social workers could do.

What advice would you give?

I would say for internships, reach out to companies as soon as possible. Right when HDFS 4200 started, I emailed two companies I was interested in interning at (HHS being one of them.) The earlier you accept the internship the better, you won't have to stress as the semester goes on. I found HHS at the Iowa State career fair, so I would highly suggest going to the career fair.