Family Success Internship

About Graham Windham  

In full partnership with families and communities, Graham Windham strives to make a life-altering difference with children, youth and families who are overcoming some of life’s most difficult challenges and obstacles, by providing each child we serve with a strong foundation for life: a safe, loving, permanent family and the opportunity and preparation to thrive in school and in the world.  

Family Success Internship

Family Success Initiative predominantly works with children and parents exposed to the following but not limited to: 

• The Situational and Environmental Stress
• Parents dealing with Intergenerational trauma and abuse
• Mental Health 
• Substance Abuse 
• Domestic Violence 
• Sexual Abuse 

The goal is to support the emotional well-being of children and families through individual coaching as well as group work. Specifically targeting infants and toddlers 0-4 years using the dyadic framework with parent/child. Our families often live in impoverished communities with minimal access to resources and/or limited knowledge to navigate the system.

FSI Approach

• One-on-one support is critical
• We help shift the experience of our infants and toddlers (i.e. early intervention) by helping parents to be more responsive to the needs of their children
• Measure progress of parents through the PICCOLO
• PICCOLO (Parenting Interactions with Children: Checklist of Observations Linked to Outcomes). It was designed to assess and monitor the quality of parent-child interactions for children ages 10 months to 47 months. It measures 29 developmentally supportive parenting behaviors in the four domains (Affection, Responsiveness, Encouragement, and Teaching).

Internship Assignments:

Responsibilities are as follows:

• Co-facilitate & Facilitate Dyadic Support Sessions 
• Individual Parent Coaching 
• Document case notes in tracker as well as the SharePoint Database for contacts made with the families in the capacity of Co-facilitator/Facilitator for Dyadic Support Sessions as well as Individual Parent Coaching 
• Attend trainings deemed appropriate to improve skill-set needed to work with children and families in child welfare. The trainings will be conducted by Graham Windham Training Development Department as well as Administration for Children Services. 
• Complete Parenting Journey intakes
• Parent Journey – Shadow Marie Dunn and Chadwick Melton in order to observe the sessions
• Engage in cross program work to ensure optimal service to the clients by collaborating with the case management staff (not limited to case planners, supervisors, directors as well as the Family Success Team). 

Supervision 

Intern will have weekly individual supervision and bi-weekly group supervision with Program Director- Marie Dunn, MSW (SIFI Certified).