Hi everyone, I posted last week about this. I have found myself in a new and unexciting position. I really would love advice or insight if you have anything.
I’m an MSW student currently searching for my generalist field placement starting this fall, and I’m feeling a bit stuck so I wanted to get some outside perspective.
So far, I’ve reached out to about 10+ sites across behavioral health, healthcare, law enforcement, and advocacy settings. This includes places like county behavioral health agencies, hospitals, police behavioral health units, forensic/child advocacy organizations, and federal agencies.
I initially tried to arrange placement at my current workplace (Child Welfare related), but that didn’t work out due to university contract restrictions and internal policy issues (one being nepotism). Since the news this morning that it is a no go, I’ve expanded my search significantly.
My field advisor is iffy. I don’t know. How it’s worked for the last month—just got assigned this advisor because there was so much turn over. I was never contacted in January for all the placement stuff. The assigned advisor quit and I fell through the cracks—is I have sent them updates and leads, they send over paperwork and a follow up email but again, super simple as it was for my work place which everyone, including my supervisor thought was going to go a different direction.
The good news is I am able to adjust my work schedule to accommodate practicum hours. Thank god for some approval :(
I’m feeling really discouraged and sad. I like having things in order + ready to go and just so worried.
My questions are:
Is this a normal number of outreach attempts at this stage?
At what point should I be worried vs just waiting for responses/follow ups?
Any advice on increasing my chances with more competitive placements like police BHU or hospital systems?
Any recommendations on where I could apply for my generalist?
I’m also open to commuting 1-2 hours away.
I just want to make sure I’m approaching this correctly and not missing something obvious.