Internships at IHN/SC

We continue to actively participate with colleges seeking placement for their students who are working toward degrees in human services and sociology.  IHN/SC has been involved with Raritan Valley Community College as a community partner for 10 years with the Executive Director a member of the RVCC Service Learning Board.  We have annually served as a site for student learning participants in both the Fall and Spring semesters.  These students are required to complete a specific task under the direction of our social worker and Director.  RVCC has been the source of these students who complete 10 hours of service in order to receive course credit.

 In addition to the 10 hour students, we have been benefitting from our participation in longer term, more intensive internships.  We have hosted four of these, two last year, two more this year and we are beginning with a third intern this Fall.

Our recent intern, Sean Bessaparis completed 80 hours at the end of July.  Sean is completing his Associates Degree (Pre-social work) at RVCC and he has been accepted into the BSW program at Rutgers starting in the Fall 2012.  In addition Sean worked as a manager at Burger King, was an expectant father and was completing 2 semesters of summer classes with the internship.  Certainly hard working, Sean’s learning plan for the internship included direct support to clients in all programs of our continuum of care, documentation of all interactions, and accompanying the social worker and clients to meetings with varied service providers.  He also performed research for our agency on “for profit” schools including costs involved,  policies and procedures and if the credits earned are transferrable.  Sean was very dedicated to our clients, able to establish excellent rapport with the clients and he truly went “above and beyond” for them.  An excellent example was providing an appropriate living environment for Coco the turtle, a beloved pet of a 2 year old client.  Sean is more enthused than ever about pursuing a career in social work and enjoyed his internship so much that he exceeded the required hours and still actively keeps in touch with our social worker.  We are confident that he will be an asset to his future clients and wish him good luck.

As we thank Sean, we are preparing to welcome our next intern from Rutgers University