IGNITE Leadership Academy Action Learning Project 2016-17 | Page 28

Mayer Waxman
Managing Director,
Senior Communities
Selfhelp Community Services., Inc.
Universal Intern Placement Form
1
How would you describe your Action Learning Project and the difference you hope it will make to
advance your organization’s mission (or the field) and benefit the individuals you serve?
For my Action Learning Project I have reached out to the graduate schools of Social Work in the New York City vicinity and introduced
the idea of their working together to adapt a Universal Intern Placement Form. A tenet of social work education is providing students
with internships in social service agencies, supervised by professional social workers who are certified in Seminar in Fi eld Instruction [SIFI].
Selfhelp, my agency, has numerous programs geared toward assisting seniors to age in place; to stay healthy, social, happy and to live
fulfilling lives at home as long as possible. Selfhelp has 10 residential buildings earmarked for affordable senior living. These residences
feature on-site social workers as part of Selfhelp’s ideology. Selfhelp also runs five senior centers, four Naturally Occurring Retirement
Communities, several casework programs, and has specialized programs for Holocaust Survivors - as the agency serving the largest group
of Survivors in the U.S. Each of these programs employs social workers, and each year Selfhelp takes on tens of social work interns from
about ten local schools [and some distance/online programs]. Each school uses its own application form for agencies to share information
regarding available placements. This creates hours of work for educational coordinators, much of it duplicative. I envision the schools
adapting a single, shared placement form that an agency educational director can fill out one time for all the schools, and tweak to update
yearly instead of repeating the process yearly.
2
How have the relationships you’ve developed as part of your project (with mentors, partners,
stakeholders, etc.) influenced this direction and you as a leader?
I have served as an educational director in 4 jobs/agencies over the last 8 years. I have formed good working relationships with the
placement coordinators at the social work schools. Many of them I only know via email or the rare phone call. There are many I have
not met in person. Nonetheless I was comfortable, based on this history and related ongoing contact, reaching out to the placement
coordinators of the local schools and suggesting they - we - work together to make it easier for agencies and schools to work together to
train the next generation of social workers. This has helped/will help me retain a more prominent leadership role within the schools of social
work, and hopefully will help me influence the schools and the incoming social workers - and perhaps help nudge both toward social service
with the aging population.
3
What have been important turning points for you, in your own learning, as you’ve engaged with the
action learning process (you might consider a surprise, insight, setback, or challenge)?
I was encouraged by the initial responses I received from schools to my proposals. I didn’t receive many responses, but from those I
received, folks seemed intrigued by the idea, and willing to pass it on to the powers that be, or to discuss it among peers. But later, I
received a thoughtful negative response. One school’s placement director told me that he did not believe that the schools would be able
or willing to utilize a single shared form because each school utilizes different software and programs to collect and maintain student
information. He felt the idea was a good one, but not necessarily easy enough to coordinate. He gave me valuable “inside” information - the
process thus far will have been productive for my office just by the fact that I received this tip. He said that some of the larger agencies
- agencies supervising 20 or more students in diverse departments and roles like my agency - instead of filling out all the multifaceted
requisite placement forms, just gather the information on a single document and sent their own formatted document to all the schools. I
do intend to use this method if I do not succeed in my ALP, but I explained to this person that I am not yet giving up on my project, if for no
other reason than that my proposal will serve all agencies, not just the largest ones.
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LeadingAge New York
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