Spring!

Hey!
Happy Easter! He is Risen! Wow, I haven't updated this in nearly three months.

I have officially been working at Children's Choice for three months. Hard to believe. One of my coworkers, who started about two weeks before I did, has quit. She left about two weeks ago and did not give two weeks notice. We have yet to hire a new worker, so things have been pretty crazy, especially for my supervisor, who has taken over her fourteen person caseload in the meantime, in addition to her responsibilities as a program coordinator.

My caseload has moved around a little bit.  I now have sixteen children on my caseload. Nine are foster care and seven are aftercare, which means they have been reunified with their parents, and I make at least one a month home visits to make sure things are going well. This month has been crazy. I had to move a sibling group of four from their aunt's to a new foster home. Unfortunately, that new foster parent could not keep all four foster children, and the two younger siblings had to be moved to a new home. They get to see each other at visits with the mom every Tuesday, which is good. But this case has been crazy for me this month.

A lot of these kids have had multiple caseworkers. I know at least three or four within the past six months. This job is tough. I work really long hours and have to drive all over the place. Working in North Philadelphia is quite an experience. I am learning a lot. Although I wouldn't want want to do this work the rest of my life, I am going to try to stick it out, for the sake of these kids. I may make mistakes (my supervisor is not the best at training new workers in how to do the job), but I am slowly starting to figure out how to make this all work.

I'm starting to look at grad schools too. I will probably go to Temple and get my Master's in Social Work. I'm not sure how I am going to balance working and going to school (part-time), but somehow I will make it work. It will all be worth it someday soon. I know most people won't/ don't get why I want to do this kind of work, but as cliche as this sounds, God is calling me to it.

My job has kind of taken over my life, which is unfortunate. I am trying to take time out for myself to relax. I am learning to just take things one day at a time. I had Good Friday off, which was really nice, and I have about six days of vacation time to use, so I also decided to take off Monday, as well. I have a dentist appointment, which is good, because I haven't been able to go in almost a year. I have not had dental insurance until I was hired at Children's Choice.

I am very happy that spring is here and that the weather is finally starting to warm up! Hopefully I will be able to get out and run like I had been doing in the fall. Next weekend I will be going on a retreat for post-college age students at Keystone (I'm backkkk haha). I hope it'll be fun!