The summer before MSW starts.

First of all, I would like to say that I'm over the moon about getting into the clinical program in social work!  Things have a funny way of not working out for me and I was bracing myself for both sides of an answer.  I remember I was looking at going overseas to Hong Kong to teach English.  I knew this is something I wanted to do before I get married and what better time than now if I didn't get in.  I was excited about this as well but I really wanted to get in too.  I let fate decide my fate.

It is currently the beginning of April and I am finishing up my case study for my second practicum at child and family services (CFS).  I have been having such a challenging time at CFS that it made writing my final assignment for school that much more difficult.  One of the sections of the assignments is putting theory and practice together.  I honestly had to look up "social work theory" to help jog my memory of what it all meant.  I am a self learner and I learn best when I look for information at my own time when it is needed.  Isn't that how life works anyway? :)

At CFS a few weeks ago, I had the oppertunity to give myself a crash course in solution focused brief therapy.  It was exciting and scary at the same time.  I had to read up on the file about the family and jog my memory about what I knew about them.  Although now that I think about it, even if I didn't have a history about the family I would have been ok.  I just needed to ask the caseworker the topics that we needed to focus on.

I found myself looking up what narrative therapy was while doing my assignment and realized that I was already doing this kind of work as part of Signs of Safety.   A part of narrative therapy is letting clients become accountable for their own life story and changing it the way they see fit.  My whole mentality going into the masters program is intervention therapy.  I wanted to apply what Dr. Bruce Perry has been teaching me all these years about child trauma and really specialize in child trauma the way that he does.  I really liked how narrative therapy was explained in this video.

**Please note that at 8:20 in this video there is a loud noise going through the video.  The video is inaudible after this.** 

Linda Au.