Internship Stories

Internship Profile

Gina Alexander completed an internship at Homethrive, Inc. in the role of a Care Guide Intern, wherein she fulfilled research requests and vetting services across the United States (U.S.) on a concierge team, shadowing care guides in clinical documentation as well as being a participant on their Dari Coach Chat feature available on the agency's website.

Her field supervisor at Homethrive emphatically sings Gina's praises: “Gina is so wonderful to have as an intern and has been extremely helpful in supporting Homethrive’s Care Team as well as Homethrive members. She is very engaged, flexible, and so eager to learn. It is a pleasure to be her field instructor.”

Organization Mission Statement

Homethrive’s mission is to transform the way employers support working family caregivers by removing the work, worry, and stress they face balancing work and family responsibilities. We do it through our family caregiving platform that uniquely blends online resources with expert one-on-one support and navigation. Whether you are caring for an aging parent, a child with special needs, or a spouse facing a new medical diagnosis, we provide comprehensive support whenever and however you need it.  

For more information:

https://www.homethrive.com/about-us

Internship Profile

After moving to Chicago in 2019, Rumi worked as a case manager and began to experience first-hand the ways the field struggles to address structural oppression. Thus, their graduate education at DePaul has been intended to build their capacity for community building, leadership, and scholarship which challenges the field to address harms caused by social work to marginalize communities historically and contemporarily.

They are in the dual Master’s degree program for Social Work and Women’s and Gender Studies. Their field work has included two internships with Alternatives, Inc. on their Restorative Justice and Behavioral Health teams. Their Master's thesis, entitled Unsettling Graduate Social Work Education at DePaul University, has been geared toward exploring student perspectives on how the department teaches about settler colonialism, decolonization, and Native peoples and offering recommendations for future growth.

Rumi hopes to continue their work unsettling social work as an educator in the field.

Organization Mission Statement

Alternatives supports and empowers Chicago youth to build safer and more vibrant communities through a combination of restorative justice and behavioral health services. Alternatives is a comprehensive, multi-cultural youth development organization that operates as a support system for more than 3,000 of Chicago’s young people and their families each year.

Our mission is to inspire young people to create a just future through practices that heal individuals, restore communities, and transform systems. Alternatives’ programs and services use an asset-based model that focuses on enriching young people’s lives by building upon individual strengths within the context of their family and community. We provide comprehensive and accessible programs that increase young people’s opportunities to succeed and grow as individuals and community members.

Alternatives serves youth between the ages of 10 and 24 and their families citywide through various Chicago public schools, our youth centers in Uptown and Washington Park. Our participants reflect the city’s rich diversity: 55% identify as Black, 28% Latinx, 7% Multi-Racial, 6% Asian and 4% white, and they lived in 70 different Chicago communities – 48% on the south and west sides of the City.

For more information:

https://alternativesyouth.org/mission/#

https://alternativesyouth.org/restorative-justice/

https://alternativesyouth.org/behavioral-health/

Internship Profile

Ashley's Foundation Field Education site was at Deborah's Place in their interim housing program where she worked with women experiencing homelessness to gain stable housing and employment. From those collaborations, she further gained insight on the prevalence of homelessness and how the existence of housing and mental health services remains necessary.

Because of her outstanding work as an intern, she was offered a full-time position as a Case Manager within Deborah's Place, and currently, she works full-time as a Flexible Housing Pool Case Manager "assisting women who have experienced homelessness and have a severe mental health diagnosis, substance use, and/or physical disability." She assists her clients to reintegrate into their community to live independently in subsidized apartments provided by The Center for Housing and Health.

Mission Statement: 

Deborah’s Place opens doors of opportunity for women who are homeless in Chicago. Supportive housing and services offer women their key to healing, achieving their goals and moving on from the experience of homelessness.

We seek to fulfill our mission through the expression of our core values:

• We believe that safe, clean and affordable housing is a right.
• We believe that every woman has the potential to achieve her goals and determine her future.
• We believe that women heal from life traumas through healthy relationships and a caring, supportive community.
• We believe we must seek to affirm diversity, strive to be inclusive of individual identities and experiences, and work to create an intentional and equitable community of residents, staff, volunteers, and donors
• We believe in striving for continual growth, development and excellence in the supportive housing and services we provide.
• We believe that our impact is greatest when we work in collaboration with individuals, organizations and the community at large.

For more information: 

https://www.deborahsplace.org/about-us/

https://www.deborahsplace.org/our-approach/

https://www.deborahsplace.org/internships/

Internship Profile

Amanda comes to DePaul University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Literature from the University of North Carolina-Asheville. While trying to create a career in Publishing, she moved to Chicago in 2019 just before the pandemic. During that time, she found herself questioning a different career path while reflecting on some of her challenging undergraduate experiences. It was then that Amanda decided to pursue a Master's degree in Social Work at DePaul University.

She hopes her graduate experiences within the program will prepare her to "have a career advocating for women and youth offering them the resources they need in a healthcare field." Through her Field Placement site at Gary Comer College Prep, she is already gaining the skills she needs for that career by providing social emotional learning to students in grades nine through twelve in addition to co-facilitating a coping skills group.

Mission Statement

To ensure that Gary Comer College Prep scholars graduate from college as well-rounded and successful citizens, our scholars will master a rigorous college preparatory curriculum, will develop the discipline necessary to succeed in their future professions, and will honor the greater community. With enough grit, zest, optimism, and gratitude we believe anything is possible for our scholars.

For more information:

https://nobleschools.org/comer/school-history-mission/

Internship Profile

Brooke considers herself to have been "so lucky to have had such a great support system" while fighting cancer, and wanted "to offer others struggling with life's circumstances [with] similar support." She decided to reinforce the fruition of that goal by obtaining a Master's in Social Work degree at DePaul University.

To complete her Field Education requirement, she was placed at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, and there, she assists the staff psychiatrist to assess admitted patients' mental health statuses. She and other staffers conduct a psychological evaluation and "make a recommendation to admit the patient to the inpatient psychiatric unit, link them to outpatient mental health services or provide therapeutic services as they remain in the hospital."

Mission Statement

Our mission is to serve the health needs of individuals, families and communities through a holistic philosophy rooted in our fundamental understanding of human beings as created in God's image. With this philosophy, we approach health care by treating people's physical, emotional and spiritual needs.

For More Information: 

https://www.advocatehealth.com/about-us/