Field Partner Highlights and Examples

Undergraduate Field Education

METCAD –the 9-1-1 Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) for Champaign County

Students provide emergency call taking and dispatching for police, fire and medical services on a 24-hour per day schedule.  Students focus on developing/providing trainings to promote self-care and guard against first responder vicarious trauma. Students also work on the Premise Alert Program, which collects information from various sources about individuals with some type of special need.

Champaign County Coroner’s Office

Students assist the coroner’s office in interacting with members of the public to obtain vital medical, social and other information relevant to death investigations. During investigations, students assist coroner personnel in working with families and healthcare personnel with determining different options for facilitating final dispositions (burial, cremation, donation, etc.).

Graduate Field Education

AMITA Health Alexian Brothers Behavioral Health Hospital

A provider of behavioral health and addiction care providing inpatient and outpatient services in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. Weekly individual supervision, group supervision, informal impromptu supervision, team meetings, case consultations and formal didactic training opportunities are provided.  MSW students have been placed in the Adolescent Partial Hospitalization Program (working with adolescents and their families. Patients present with anxiety, depression, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), substance use, conduct disturbance and other mental health disorders); Center for Addiction Medicine and the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Anxiety Disorders Program.

Cook County Sheriff’s Department

For students interested in both clinical and administrative work- primarily working with women inmates, social work interns have an opportunity to conduct assessments, provide individual treatment, facilitate groups, and participate in staffings, as well as assist in the preparation of re-entry into the community.  Additional macro learning opportunities are afforded, as one field instructor is the Assistant Executive Director of Programs, allowing for students to develop new programming at the jail and observe how policy changes impact practice.

Unity Point Human Services Center in Peoria

Students orient to the agency the first couple of weeks on different units such as psychosocial rehab or residential and outpatient substance use treatment services or shadow at the jail and in their methadone clinic. Students are then able to select the area which most interests them for their internship.