My senior internship placement is at the Mecosta/Osceola Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), located at 800 Water Tower Road in Big Rapids, Michigan. The agency’s mission is to promote the health, safety, and independence of individuals and families through the programs it provides the community. DHHS has federal goals of child safety, permanency, and the functioning of the family unit. Additionally, DHHS has outcome measures to reduce CPS re-referral, reduce out-of-home placements or repeat placements of children into the foster care system, reduce the length of time children stay in foster care or with guardians, and to increase adoptions. DHHS is a public government agency that helps empower and enable individuals and families in the Mecosta/Osceola community by providing vital resources through programs such as Medicaid, the Family Assistance Program (FAP), and the Michigan Youth Outreach Initiative (MYOI), removing obstacles preventing clients from achieving their goals, and providing referrals through other community agencies such as WISE and Community Mental Health to create a support network for its clients.
As a public agency, DHHS interacts with a broad section of the community. At the Mecosta/Osceola DHHS, services are available only for residents of the target counties. Within these confines, DHHS’s target demographics are individuals and families living in poverty, children suspected to be abused or neglected and their families, minors in the Juvenile Justice system, children and families in the Foster Care system, and vulnerable adults, but are certainly not limited to these categories. To provide for the community, DHHS offers a myriad of services, including Within the Mecosta/Osceola DHHS, the County Director, Danielle Martin, is at the top of the hierarchy. Danielle reports to the Business Service Center Director of the surrounding counties, Kathy Miller. Danielle supervises the Community Resource Coordinator, two Accounts Payable Supervisors, and one Services Program Manager, my supervisor, Jen Schmidt.
As Jen’s intern, I report to Jen, but I am three steps below her in the organizational structure of the agency. My official title through DHHS is “DHHS Contractor”. Below Jen are five Services Program Managers, each of whom have multiple direct reports in different departments, including twenty CPS workers, one MYOI worker, two Foster Care Licensing workers, five Foster Care workers, and one Child Welfare Funding Specialist. DHHS receives funding from the government, and thus each DHHS is allocated funds by the state of Michigan. The funds allocated to the Mecosta/Osceola DHHS are further budgeted toward different departments or programs, such as the Child Safety and Permanency Plan (CSPP), the Family Independence Program (FIP), or Flex Funds. The chief source of legitimation for DHHS is governmental endorsement. Because DHHS is funded by the government, there is a sense of authority and respect afforded to a government agency.
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The agency is also legitimized by cultural tradition, as the agency has been assisting individuals and families throughout the state and the country for decades and is recognized as a major resource for families in need of assistance. • If the agency is part of a larger bureaucracy or association of agencies, what are the structural and resource relationships of this larger connection? The Mecosta/Osceola DHHS is just one of thirteen DHHS offices in the state of Michigan. Funding for the fiscal year is allocated by the state by Business Service Center district, and to each county within districts. In the Mecosta/Osceola communities, DHHS works closely with the Community Mental Health (CMH) of Central Michigan. When interviewing minors who are suspected to be abused or neglected, CPS workers perform a trauma checklist to assess the amount of trauma a child has witnessed and the effects of the trauma on the child’s behavior. If the trauma the child has faced is over a certain threshold, the child and the family may be referred to CMH services.
My current tasks at DHHS include grant writing for the CAC, shadowing DHHS workers in the field, drafting monthly Trauma Checklist spreadsheets, attending Foster Care unit team meetings, CPS unit meetings, and Trauma Team meetings, and sorting and organizing CAC donations. I anticipate my role at DHHS developing more responsibility and client interactions during my second semester in my placement. I am hopeful that the Open Arms CAC will become accredited during my placement and will begin performing forensic interviews. During my second semester at DHHS, I hope to observe a forensic interview and witness the interactions between the forensic interviewer, the client, and the wide range of professionals in the viewing room. Jen has discussed the potential for me to develop a proposal and budget for a fundraiser or gala for the CAC, which I would like to undertake as a long-term project, as well as taking the minutes for team meetings. In my Learning Contract, I am realistic about the amount of responsibility I will have during the first semester of my placement.
I understand that it may be a bit unusual to have a supervisor with an admin role at the organization, and thus no direct reports for me to shadow. Additionally, because my chief responsibility in DHHS is aiding the development and accreditation of the CAC, there will be times where I will be working individually for the CAC rather than shadowing team members. To reflect this in my learning contract, I have included many of the CAC tasks I’ve been assigned and examined the core competencies in the learning contract that revolve around the Planned Change Model. As I will not be having as much client interaction in the first semester of my placement, I have chosen to frame these core competencies as hypotheticals which I will utilize when I have client interactions when shadowing DHHS workers. I am also working to develop relationships with caseworkers in other departments to experience more of the interdepartmental interactions at my placement and gain more field experience. • Overall, how does this agency further the goals and values of the social work profession? DHHS upholds the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics (2017) by emphasizing the inherent dignity and worth of the person by trusting the client as the expert on their own experience, helping clients achieve self-sufficiency, and striving for family preservation and reunification.
