MSW student Cassidy Hall
"I decided on Pitt because of all the fellowship opportunities and certificate tracks. I had driven through Pittsburgh once and the city just felt good to me so when I thought about pursuing my masters it was the first place I looked. I’m currently placed at HSAO on their Drug & Alcohol Case Management team. This placement is the exact reason I wanted to move to a city. The way our agency intersects with the justice system as well as the breadth of resources available to our clients is what I have dreamed about having access to for years as I worked in a rural setting previously. My supervisor, Jola, is phenomenal and I couldn’t ask for a better team to be a part of. Once I get my degree I hope to continue in the D&A field as a case manager, ideally I would love to be onboarded at my current placement. Coming from a case management background I didn’t think there would be much to learn at my placement but case management in a city that has multitudes of resources is a very different experience than what I was used to doing. I have learned a lot about local resources and programs designed for our clients. My most memorable experience here is going to mental health court, a specialized treatment court for people with mental health disabilities, and listening to the judge speak to the people there with such compassion and grace. People could mess up and not be sent to jail, they had access to treatment and many were thriving. Multiple people were soon graduating from the program and you could see the pride on their faces. It made me emotional wishing that my clients back home in New Hampshire could have had access to a program like this but also gave me great hope and made me feel like the work we do actually matters. These people are healing and we get to be there to cheer them on the whole way."
Field Instructor Jola Blecher, LSW, CAAP
Jola Blecher, LSW, CAAP is the HSAO Supervisor for Drug and Alcohol Case Management. She shares, "Our program is designed to help Allegheny County residents to access treatment and services related to the goals of addiction recovery. Our mission is to empower individuals, families and communities by improving the quality of life through specialized, personalized enhanced and effective service coordination. I received my BASW and MSW at the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work. During my field education experience I had the opportunity to work with individuals who were incarcerated and recently released. I continued my career as an intern with the Drug Court program. I went on to be a Case Manager, then a Supervisor at HSAO and have been with our agency for 13 years. It was always my goal to give others the same opportunity that I received as an intern. Working with Cassidy has been a great learning experience. As Cassidy has progressed through her internship, she has been not only learning from us, but providing her knowledge to assist our team. Among many great things, Cassidy has created and presented a training for our staff on the connection to benefits to better assist the individuals we are serving. It has truly been a great experience for everyone."