My training

All my training time I spent in Vilniaus arkivyskupijos caritas (VAC) children’s and teenager’s day centre ‘‘Hope angel’’. It is nongovernmental organization which purpose is to help children from risk group’s families to get social and financial help and also improve their mutual relationships.
My training purpose was to know about institution’s, where I did my training, politic and help, support giving methods. Also I wanted to know how social worker works, how she establishes her clients problems, how this help process is going from beginning to the end. Moreover, I wanted to improve my communication skills and be able to collaborate with other institutions.
In the beginning of my training I foresaw some tasks in order to reach my purpose. I made acquaintance with VAC day centre’s documents and realization of their help projects. I got a lot of information about social worker’s job and almost all my training time I was working there as a real social worker. I went to schools and talked with teachers about girls with whom I was working. It was very frightening because I have to go there alone and without any experience of communicating with teachers, talk about such questions. However, I went to these girls home. To one girl I went alone and it also was very unpleasant and terrifying because I did not know what to expect there. But my visit was successful and I had no problems. I successfully entered to relations with this family. To other girl’s home I went with social worker because it would be too dangerous for me to go there alone. In spite of that, our visit also was successful.
To improve my communication skills I spent a lot of time with children. I was playing and doing homework with them. In addition to this, I worked very intensive with one girl who had some problems with communication, behaviour and learning. Moreover, there were some problems in her family. So, I spent a lot of time with her, went to her home, communicated with her family and tired to establish her problems. After that, I did an individual help plan which should help other social workers to work with her.
Al things considered, I got very useful experience and a lot of information about social work through my training. I think, all my tasks and purpose were reached. Now I have real understanding about this profession and it is really hard and very important job for everyone of us especially for risk group’s families.