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Sheila Guy, Student Internship at Methodist Home For Children
"My office is in the Jordan Center, which is the daycare. They have children with learning disabilities, children from low income families and other children. They have the tender hearts unit or kids with special medical needs. When they are short staffed, I go in and work with them. On days when I'm in the office, I work on outcome. I call around to children that have been in foster care or group homes and now they are discharged because either they have gone back with their biological family, they went on to adoption or to a higher level facility. On days when I have appointments, I do home visits, school visits and sit in on what they call treatment teams. The treatment team meetings [involve all representatives from all systems] and we go over everything that has gone on for the past month for that client. I'm mentoring a young lady that is in a youth home for girls. So, we would look at her goals to see if any changes need to be made. At the meeting, the children have an opportunity to express their needs. It's really great because the young lady I'm working with, ournumber one goal has been to find her a job...in order to get her diploma. She has got a job. She will be working at McDonald's. She is so excited. I am so happy for her because she was so frustrated. She has been interviewing and filling out job applications and she hadn't heard [back from anyone]. The other thing we're working on is getting her to a fifth grade math level. So, we have been playing Monopoly and I make her be the banker. She's picking up things really fast."

Methodist Home for Children web site

Kristian Adcock, Student Internship at Sunnybrook Healthcare & Rehab
"When I first started, I worked in Activities to get to know the residents and to help them with the activities. I think was good to start with activities because I got to know the residents and where their rooms were. Then, I shadowed Wendy for awhile. I went to meetings with her. I shadowed her during assessments. It was during admission assessments. When a resident first comes in from a hospital, for example, we do an admissions interview. I'm doing the admission assessments on my own now. It's just like getting a social history from them like where they were born, what they do for a living, information like that. We also assess if they have any equipment at home. This is also a rehab facility, long term, so those residents will usually go back home. So, we want to assess what they have at home. For example, we want to know if they have a wheelchair or walker. They might need the equipment if they don't have it. We also ask if they have any help at home, like a nurse aide. They more than likely will need in-home care as well. We also test their cognitive level when they are admitted to check their short term and long term memory. We have a lot of meetings. I set up patient care conferences, too. It's a conference with rehab, the social worker, nursing, dietary and a family member. In the conference, we let the family know [the status of the client]."

"I love working with the aging population! I have volunteer experience with this population and it was fun. I love working here. The employees are really nice and work as a team. The residents are really nice. I was interested in working with substance abuse in a treatment facility but am no longer interested. Now that I have done this, I really like it. So, now I'm thinking about getting a job working with the aging population."

Sunnybrook Healthcare & Rehabilitation Specialists website