I started practicing social work while working on my Bachelor's degree in sociology at Central Michigan University in the mid-1990's. I have worked in Central and Northern Michigan since then helping youths and families by helping them with the issues that they feel are most important to change.
I began this work when I realized that, in order to be personally healthy and enjoy whatever life I created for myself, I must help others and live what I feel is a "useful life". This led me to work with youths and families addressing various needs from housing, functional skills development, poverty relief, and social justice, generally speaking.
Before moving up north, I worked for Eagle Village, Inc., as a "youth surveillance worker" in a program called WINGS, which was designed to create juvenile justice system alternatives for youth involved in that system. The program helped maintain young people in their homes and communities and reduce out-of-home placements in residential programs and detention centers. In this work, I visited families in their homes to make sure that youths were involved in constructive and non-harmful activities and supported their families to reduce the escalation of crisis. I worked for Eagle Village for about two years.
When I moved up north, I took a job with Third Level Crisis Center. There, I began work in a newly created Street Outreach Program designed to prevent homelessness and the proliferation of AIDS among homeless youths aged 10-20. The aim of the program was to promote harm reduction strategies related to the risks that adolescents engage in when not living in a structured living environment. I worked for that program for three years developing positive youth culture through safer alternatives for life like drug-free music shows and personal education through information/resource cards, survival packs and personal and group counseling, and family therapy. I also did crisis line work in this capacity as well. In addition to my main responsibilities, I sat on multiple county collaborative bodies, and did community education on the issues of youth homelessness in Northern Michigan. This was a very wonderful opportunity which introduced me to the practice of using psychodynamic theory and the transtheoretical (or "stages of change") model.
After leaving Third Level, I took a job with Northern Family Intervention Services, Inc., where I still work as a "Family Specialist". As part of their home-based program, I go to families' homes throughout Northern Michigan to alleviate crisis, teach functional skills, provide community-based social work services, all to prevent out-of-home placement of youths and foster family preservation. I have worked with NFIS for nearly ten years. In this position, I help families with goals that they choose for themselves to promote problem-solving skills in all areas of personal and family life. My other responsibilities include sitting on a local human services collaborative body with 70 other community organizations, helping with grant and Board development for our agency, organizing an annual regional human services conference, It Takes A Village Conference & Workshops, and handling our agency's marketing and public relations through development of our business collateral, brochures, and our agency's website.
As a concerned citizen, sociologist and social worker, I also work with the area Poverty Reduction Initiative, which is a national example in its own right. In that capacity, I work on its Steering Committee and have been selected to chair its Survey and Research committee, which is beginning to undertake a qualitative study of poverty in the five county region of Grand Traverse Bay and the experiences of those living in it.
Click here to see a version of my resume which emphasizes my work in social work.