The Ohio State University at Lima continues to build out the much-needed workforce pipeline that ends with the community having enough social workers. During its first Day in the Life of a Social Worker visit day, 55 high school students with an interest in social work as a profession spent the day on campus talking to social workers already working in the field and Ohio State Lima students advancing toward the field with classroom education, internships and field placements.
The day was carefully crafted to give students a real idea of what they could do in the profession, to showcase the many career tracks they could take, and to get them thinking of all the areas their choices could touch.
“Social workers are all over the place,” said Elizabeth Osborne, LISW, behavioral health specialist at Ohio State Lima. “We're in schools, we're in hospital settings, we're behavior-health specialists, we’re working with the geriatric population, juvenile detention. We're everywhere.”
In addition to classroom visits and industry panels, a 17-agency fair brought in groups from across Allen, Auglaize and Hardin counties that depend on social workers to function.
Two alumnae of the Ohio State Lima program and now practicing social workers greeted the students at the Crime Victims Services booth at the agency fair. Cora Kindle and Erica Hageman-Brinkman, both BSSW 2023, answered questions, talked about their experiences both at Ohio State Lima and in the field, and encouraged students to be open to the wide variety of opportunities the fair highlighted.
“I feel like it is amazing to have social workers from all different parts of the field. It's such a vast field, there are so many different places you can work. Almost anywhere you go there could be a social worker,” Hageman said. “It's great to see different parts of it, being able to ask those nitty-gritty sort of questions.”
The visiting high school students were taking the opportunity seriously, asking questions and digging into the profession while they had so many social workers available in one place.
“I’d like to have a job in social work,” said Fort Recovery junior Yaneth Esparza. “I'd like to learn more about every little part of this job. I want to learn each little piece of the social work area.”
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A Day in the Life of a Social Worker was presented in partnership with the Mental Health and Recovery Services Board of Allen, Auglaize, and Hardin Counties workforce development efforts.
