9/7/10--9/9/10
I just completed my first week as an intern at the International Institute of Buffalo. In case you don’t know about the Institute, I’ll give you a little background. The Institiute is dedicated to supporting and assisting immigrants and refugees who face language and cultural barriers when arriving in the US, so they can become self-sufficient members of society. I work in the Refugee Resettlement department of the Institute. Here, I am assigned to a social worker who is just bogged down with cases. I pick up some of the work that she has no time to complete. For example, on Tuesday, I arranged basic home necessities (such as cleaning supplies, bedding, housewares, etc.) for a family on their way to the country, and I also went food shopping for the newly arriving family. After getting all of this organized for the family, I went to the apartment that the family will be living in and organized everything so that the family could just walk into a new yet comfortable environment.
On Thursday I had very different tasks. I taught a man who had only been in the country for four days how to use the bus and how to get money out of the bank. He knew very little English but was very appreciative. It was a nice feeling to know that I taught him how to use the bus, which would therefore allow him to get a job here and be able to leave his apartment at his will. Overall, it was an exciting first week!
9/14-9/16/10
This week at the Institute, I realized that the key characteristic that a social worker possesses is patience. On Tuesday, I took a family that was only 4 days into being in the US to the Department of Social Security. I waited there with them for over an hour and then the office couldn't give them their social security cards because of an error. It was frustrating for me to sit there but it must have been so much more frustrating for the family to have to leave the office with nothing. On top of that, on Tuesday I also went down to the bus station to pick up some tokens so new clients have the ability to pay for the bus and I also packed up some necessities for an incoming family.
On Thursday, I picked up some diapers for the family that I took to Department of Social Security. I dropped them off about midday but I had to knock on the door four times and finally yell that it was Emily from the Institute before the wife would come to the door. It's heartbreaking to see that even after escaping a devastating situation in her own country, she still lives in complete fear. The only highlight of this was that she was so happy to see a familiar face. It made me feel some sort of satisfaction that day.
9/21-9/23
This week at the Institute was pretty hectic. There are quite a few cases all arriving at the same time so it is very difficult to keep track of them all. On Tuesday, I taught clients how to ride the bus to their doctor appointments, packed up various household goods for them and dropped them off.
On Thursday, I took a man to show him how to ride the bus to his doctor appointment again, but his appointment is at a time next week when I won’t be there so I had to made sure he remembered exactly how to get there on his own. The poor man did not know what I was saying to him whatsoever and he had no idea why I was trying to tell him to remember this bus route. Finally, while riding the bus, we got lucky and a man started speaking to him in his own language, so I asked him to translate where we were going. I am learning to become so flexible with everything at the Institute. I hear flexibility is extremely important in the field of social work so this seems to be working out in my favor!
9/28/10 – 9/30/10
This was an incredibly hectic week at the internship. Tuesday started with me coming in early and taking 7 clients to the ECMC to get their first primary care appointments. This was a little crazy because I hadn’t worked with any of these clients before so I didn’t know even what their names were and it took me a little while to learn them because we were running late to the appointments. I found that relying on just asking for help from the people in the hospital worked wonders because I didn’t even know where I was going once in the building. We were successful in getting all of the clients to the appointments on time! After that hour of craziness ended, the day was filled with the normal tasks of making doctors appointments and organizing household goods for an incoming family.
Another aspect of this week that was really exciting was that we got a family of 7 in from Jordan. I have yet to meet them, but because of the size of the family, the social worker that I work for needed some extra help planning. I learned how to write case notes about the tasks she and I completed, which will be an important task to know how to do when I am in the social work field. I also filled out forms for four of their kids to be able to attend the Buffalo Public School District. I love this internship because they really put their faith in me to complete tasks on my own that will be directly beneficial to the clients. By doing things on my own and learning as I go, I feel that I am learning so much and the skills I’m obtaining now are going to become so useful in the future.
10/4/10 – 10/6/10
A family of seven came through the Institute this week. They came from Iraq originally, but they were at a refugee camp in Jordan for a while as well. The dynamics of the relationship between this family and myself are quite interesting. I didn’t know what to expect when dealing with people coming from a war zone that is partially due to our country. I thought they would be very unresponsive to what I was trying to do for them, but they were trying their hardest to understand what I was doing and they were very appreciative as well. Having never worked with anybody from Iraq before, I didn’t realize that Iraqis exhibit different body language than people I have worked with from say, Bhutan or Burma. For example, the wife is very protective of her husband and seems to change her body language when he is around. That is perfectly fine by me because after all that is all she has ever known from the society which she is from. I am learning more and more how to respect people’s differing points of view and to learn from what they have to offer in terms of sharing the situations they have been through with me.
10/12/10 – 10/14/10
I was working with the Iraqi family again this week. I went to their home to take the father to show him how to use the bus system to get to the Institute. Unfortunately, the bus ride was very long and since he doesn’t know very much English, communication was very difficult. While I was waiting for him to get ready to get on the bus, I taught one of his little daughters how to count to 10 in English. She was so excited about it! When we finally got to the Institute, I helped him fill out some paperwork so his children could attend the Buffalo Public School District. Afterwards, I took him home and as soon as we got back to his house I had more assignments to fulfill. This one was taking 5 of the clients to teach them how to pay their rent, which was overdue for each of them. We had to use their EBT cards to get the money but some of them didn’t have enough on their cards or some other problem occurred so this issue carried over into Thursday. This was probably the most difficult task I have done so far because I have never gotten a money order before, and I was trying to teach them how to do it. There is so much learning on the fly associated with this internship. I feel like I am challenged by a new situation everyday that I’m here. After 5 total hours between Tuesday and Thursday, I managed to pay each of their rents separately. Although situations like this can be frustrating, the clients appreciate it greatly every time they learn sometime new.
10/19/10 – 10/21/10
Tuesday: I loved this week at the internship because my case manager let me take on some extra tasks that go directly back to the United States Committee for Refugees (USCRI). Basically, I reported on every aspect of individual refugees’ lives and this information gets sent directly back to the Committee. I also wrote some case notes for my case manager. She says that I am doing a good job with assisting the refugees so I deserve to learn more about how the entire process works. While there is mainly just an extensive amount of paperwork involved, it is all necessary work for the government and it was interesting to be able to learn more about the lives of the refugees, since they do not speak English, it can be almost impossible to learn this otherwise. On top of this paperwork, I also went to the apartment of a client that would be arriving that night. I had to check over the apartment and make sure everything that he needed was in order. Any issues had to be reported to both the USCRI and the landlord for repair. After all of this, I had to drop off some items like pillows and a baby crib to some clients as well as make some doctors appointments. This was a busy day to say the least.
Thursday: On this day I finished some more of the paperwork that I couldn’t get through on Tuesday. I also went to check an apartment for another incoming client as I did on Tuesday, but this time, I had to do things like put together the bed for him and move around some furniture. I also took the client that came in on Tuesday night to apply for his social security card. We were successful, with no problems, which was great!
10/26/10 – 10/28/10
This week was quite slow in terms of work, which is uncommon for my case manager and I. This was the first time that I was looking for work to do, rather than trying to balance a mountain of work. The workload was so light because a client that was supposed to come in on the night of the 26th was unexpectedly cancelled on the 25th. This is frustrating for us because of the preparations that we put into them coming, but it must be so much more frustrating for the refugee themselves. If I had my guess I would say that he probably got sick at the last minute and was prevented to travel, but there could be a hundred reasons why he didn’t make it to the US.
The tasks that needed to be done this week mostly revolved around a new refugee. I have been working with him quite often lately. On Tuesday, I took this refugee to the Emergency Room at Buffalo General Hospital because he had not had his high blood pressure medication for two weeks since he arrived in the US. My case manager was worried about him and since his closest primary care appointment was not for another four weeks, she wanted to take care of this now. When I took him to the ER, I realized the process of getting him medication was going to be very difficult. He did not know enough English to explain to them what medication he had been on, what allergies he might have, etc. Because of this, we had to wait for hours before we could see a doctor because they have to use a certain kind of phone that would connect them to a translator. The process was long and frustrating as they decided that he did not need medication at this time.
Other than going to the ER, I had a fairly quiet day at the Institute. I helped out my case manager with some filing and paperwork and that was the extent of my day. On Thursday, the workload picked up greatly because my case manager was notified that she will have four more clients coming within the next two weeks. In preparation, I took some household goods over to some of their apartments. On top of this, I also took the client that I had taken to the ER on Tuesday on the bus to show him where the grocery store was and how to use his foodstamps card. The next few weeks will be hectic around the Institute to say the least.
11/2/10 – 11/4/10
This Tuesday was an interesting day. I had to take a client to get his social security card because he just entered the country (which is quite a common practice) and then I had to move him from his temporary housing to his own apartment on the other side of Buffalo. He was living with another client for the time being, who had arrived 2 weeks earlier. I feel like this situation was actually a good way for the client to get acclimated into the country. I thought it might have helped this newcomer especially because he was quite shy. Moving him into his new apartment took up a chunk of time, because his new place needed quite a bit of cleaning. I stayed and helped him clean until I had to leave to meet with another client.
The next client that I met with, I had already worked with multiple times. He needed me to teach him how to use the bus to get downtown to the Department of Social Services to get paperwork saying that he was able to work in this country. This took barely any time at all and the client was very grateful.
After this, I tried to take another client that I had worked with before to pay his rent, as well as show him via bus how to get to his upcoming doctor’s appointment. Unfortunately, since these clients had a day off from their English classes, (where I would normally pick them up from) they were out doing things around town so they were not home. I ended up completing this task on Thursday instead. This client was also very grateful.
After I finished these assignments on both Tuesday and Thursday, I learned how to fill out intake paperwork for my case manager. When the Institute is notified that a client is coming, the case manager that they are assigned to must fill out a large amount of paperwork regarding their refugee status, health status, what benefits they need to apply for, etc. I completed this paperwork to the best of my ability for my case manager, which saves her a great amount of time that apply to further assist the clients.
11/9/10 – 11/11/10
I spent the majority of my seven-hour shift this past Tuesday waiting in the Department of Social Services. The wait was the worst I had ever seen it. I had a brand new family of three come in and when you go the Department of Social Services with more than 1 person needed a new card, the wait is even longer. The family was nice, but very shy and very flustered. They had just arrived a day or two before and they were exhausted. After getting their cards, I took the mother and child home and taught the father how to get around on the bus. I also took him to the bank so that he could get his stipend from the government.
After finishing up a long day with this client, I went to another client’s house to check up on him and also teach him how to use the bus to get to the Institute since he was also new. It was a long and tiring day of using public transportation.
On Thursday, I took that new family of three to buy some groceries since they were almost out of food. This was a fairly simple task and didn’t take up much time. After that I started my tedious task of trying to write core services checklists based on my case manager’s case notes. This means that I have to look up the date of every service provided to the client and document the date and initial for whomever it was that provided the service. This is very tedious because this is a government form which gets down to the smallest details of when their home visits were, what dates they went to the doctor, if they filled out all necessary forms with a translator, etc.. This is teaching me a large amount about working with case notes nonetheless.
11/16/10 – 11/18/10
Tuesday was a very long day at the Institute. It began with me taking a client to ECMC for a Tuberculosis screening, which should have taken about half an hour but ended up taking about 3. After a long morning of waiting, I picked up a client and took him to the grocery store. I taught him how to use his foodstamps card as well as taught him where everything was in the grocery store. After that, I went over to the new apartment for some incoming clients and set up the apartment for them. I only had about 10 minutes to set this apartment up, so I was definitely on a time crunch. Following that, I went over and met with a new client and took him to a new doctor. I really liked this doctor’s office because the staff was much more inviting and friendly than those doctors that usually work with the refugees. A sad realization that I have found is that many doctors will refuse these refugees because they do not get paid as much to take care of them because they have Medicaid. They refuse them by saying that because they have had budget cuts recently, they cannot afford to take the refugees under Medicaid. So, I was happy to finally have such a great doctor taking the refugees.
On Thursday, I started by taking a client to apply for their social security card. They were denied the week before because they changed the system and expected the Institute to know to go online and answer some questions for the refugees that don’t even really apply to the refugees anyway. We were fortunately successful this time around. Following this experience, I took this client as well as two others on the bus to show them how to use their foodstamps cards at the local Tops, as well as take out some money so they would be able to pay their rent on Tuesday. Only one of these people was successful at getting some money out, making Tuesday already a little difficult. When together, the refugees were much more relaxed, but almost too much to the point that they didn’t listen to everything I was telling them. This was aggravating, but overall I was happy that they were making friends with each other and that they would have a support system here to help them through such a difficult situation.
11/23/10
This was a short week for me because of the Thanksgiving holiday. I did quite a bit of running around on Tuesday, starting out with taking yet another client to try to take out enough money to be able to pay their rent. I was upset that when I took the four clients to the post office to pay their rent that only one of them had enough money to pay for it. One of them who had the money on Thursday to pay for their rent, bought an 80 dollar coat over the weekend and couldn’t afford it. I was upset with him because the Institute is associated with services that could have given him a coat for free and I was also upset because he understood that he was going to pay his rent on Tuesday, but he spent the money anyway. Regardless of some of the people not being able to pay rent, I still taught them all how to write a money order at the post office, so they will be able to pay their bills in the future.
After teaching these people how to pay their rent, I took two of them back to their English classes and kept the others with me so that I could take them to the bank and cash some stipend checks that they had. Afterwards, we returned to the post office to get another money order so that one of the clients could pay their gas bill. I made him ask for the money order himself this time but he was extremely nervous. The man working at the post office was really pressuring him to ask for it himself, which I think set off some sort of trigger within him. Knowing from my psychology classes, he might have had a flashback to a negative experience that he was having at home. He might have PTSD it seems because he completely shut down after this experience. He stopped joking around with his friend and he also looked a little glazed over in his eyes. He was obviously having a hard time. I felt bad for pushing him to ask for a money order on his own, but he needs to learn how to do it now, or he will have even more trouble in the future when I am not there to help him.
After all of this trouble, I took a new family to apply for their social security cards. We waited for almost two hours, but they will finally be receiving them. The new family is from Burma and very nice, but obviously having trouble transitioning. They are exhausted and nervous. I think over time, they will adjust better.
11/30 – 12/2
This week really brought some of the problems that these refugees are facing to life. I had to make many appointments for the refugees on Tuesday. Most were for doctors’ appointments, but one stood out. It was for a family of three to go to counseling because just before they left their refugee camp, they had lost their 8-year-old boy in the violence. They were originally from Myanmar, but then were temporarily settled in Malaysia and lost their son their. They have another young child, who seems to keep them going through this hard time. After making an appointment for them, I had to rush over to the home of a new family of refugees. They had an appointment at a doctor’s office that we had not used before at the Institute. After picking them up and driving them about 20 minutes to the doctor’s office, the receptionist informed me that they could not be seen today because they cancelled the appointment without notifying anyone previously. This was obviously upsetting to the refugee family because their children cannot attend school without going to this appointment. After taking the family back and returning to the Institute, my case manager was very upset that they had been denied. This is a problem that she took up with the manager of the entire Institute and from there I know that more serious action was taken because they had refused the family after already accepting an appointment.
Thursday was more toned down in comparison to Tuesday. I spent the whole day working on paperwork for three different clients coming to the Institute in the upcoming weeks. I had to fill out medical, financial, and social security paperwork, amongst other types of paperwork for a family with children who need to attend school. This was a nice break from the hectic nature of many other tasks that I had to do that week.
12/7 – 12/9
This week was my last week at my internship. Tuesday was a day that I was able to accumulate all that I had learned thus far in the internship. My case manager was out of the office for the whole day, moving new clients into a home and picking them up from the airport, so I taking over her responsibilities. This was probably my busiest day thus far. I began my week by preparing three houses for incoming clients. This took a few hours, but I was luckily enough to get some help from an anchor (a previously arrived refugee) for one of the houses. I won’t be able to meet any of these refugees because I will be leaving before they arrive. Also, after this I went to ECMC to pick up two clients who had their primary care checkup. This was a simple task, as I was just bringing them back to the Institute. Finally, I tried to complete as many of the clients’ case notes as I could, while answering phone calls, faxing files to doctors’ offices and many other tasks. As crazy as this day was, it was exciting and made me realize how exhausting a social workers’ day would be.
Thursday this week was calmed down compared to Tuesday. I spent most of the three hours waiting in the social security office with a family of five. The family was very nice, but the appointment took almost three hours and was a long day for the small children who were anxious to get out.
