The Alle-Kiski Area HOPE Center, Inc (HOPE) has been offering supportive services, opportunities for healing, and community education to assist victims, and end violence and abuse for over 40 years. Erin Gillette (SOCWK’04) has been there for eighteen of those years, starting as a Pitt School of Social Work MSW student for her very first field placement. She had no idea that she would end up finding the place she would call home. “When I started looking for a field placement, I looked at a lot of different options” she explained. “I was brand new to social work, and I wanted to see what would fit. Since I am from the Alle-Kiski valley HOPE seemed like good fit.”
HOPE provides a wide array of services for victims of domestic violence including a 24 hour hotline, an emergency shelter, legal advocacy, prevention services, and more. The range of services attracted Gillette, and she notes: “I had a wide variety of experiences during my internship. The legal department, the 24-hour hotlines, housing, the emergency shelter--I got to shadow every part of it. The shelter hit home with me the most. It was where I could see the greatest impact. We were helping put these people back together, helping them build their own self-sufficiency plan. It made a difference.”
Now Gillette serves as Supervisor of Residential Services where she oversees the emergency shelter and rapid rehousing programs, and has come full circle--supervising interns from the Pitt Social Work program, along with students from Penn State, Slippery Rock, and Edinboro University.
Gillette enjoys being a field supervisor because she wants to provide the same type of positive experience she had with HOPE to her students. “We train them like staff,” she said. “So they can fully function in the organization. And we’re tying what they learn in their classes to what they practice in the field. It is important to draw those two together-education and field- to succeed in this line of work.”
HOPE students this term are thriving; both JulieHera DeStefano and Cheyanne Neuenschwander have been doing their field placements at HOPE since September. The job started with an intense forty-five hour domestic violence training, and from there they moved into positions of real responsibility. “Without a doubt, the best part of this internship is being treated as staff members,” said DeStefano. “Being given responsibilities, but also incredible guidance and oversight on how to participate as active members of the HOPE team. There is no sitting in the corner filing papers! We get to see social work in action every day.”
Neuenschwander has had similarly positive experience. She shares, “I had a few years’ experience in crisis intervention and domestic violence prevention so I knew I wanted to go into the crisis intervention field working with vulnerable populations, but I wanted to learn how to navigate the systems in Pennsylvania. Now I work in the HOPE rapid rehousing program, where I am learning how to navigate those PA systems: housing, case management, and whatever resources they have for people in need. As a social worker, I have to learn how to adapt, and I wanted a site that would guide me and give me the necessary tools to help me go into a field I want to go into for the rest of my life.”
Both say it helps tremendously to have a field supervisor like Gillette who knows what the Pitt Social Work program expects from its students, and is willing to help give them a broad field experience. The students are facing clients who are experiencing crisis on a daily basis.
“There are so many moving parts in this internship!” said Neuenschwander. “I get to experience so many different roles like an advocate or case manager, and I have one-on-one interactions with people. There are just so many different opportunities all in this one site.”
DeStefano has been working in the emergency shelter, a program that takes in people who are experiencing domestic violence-mostly women, and many times children. “This is a crisis-focused internship,” she explains. “Dealing with the day-to-day implications of someone experiencing domestic violence and needing to leave that situation. They arrive at shelter, and we provide wrap-around care. Anything from clothes and supplies to getting kids enrolled in local schools, or just an ear for someone to share their experiences. It is eye opening to bear witness to the moving pieces of a life, to see how incredibly intertwined and complicated everything can be, and to see all of the things we take for granted. So many times these people are building from the ground up, and we can be their cheerleaders.”
To read more about the work of the Alle-Kiski Area HOPE Center, Inc visit their website.