Internship at the NWSDS

My internship is with the Northwest Senior and Disability Services in McMinnville. It is a intergovernmental agency that provides information, assistance, and services to seniors and people with disability in order to promote independence and enhance their quality of life. Part of this effort includes trying to redirect people from nursing homes, which are often expensive and overcrowded, into other living facilities, like adult foster care homes. In an effort to educate seniors and their families about what adult foster care homes are, I was given a project to create a one-page profile of each of the adult foster care homes in Yamhill County and compile them into a portfolio for NWSDS to show to clients in the future.

In order to do this, I had to call each adult foster care home and schedule appointments, travel to these homes, interview and take pictures of their home, and transcribe the interview from my voice recorder. The interviewing process will take up most of March to complete, and I think I will be spending a lot of my springbreak transcribing the interviews and working on creating the profile in order to have this project done in time for May.

This project is something that I have never done before, and has been (and will probably continue to be) a great informative learning experience. I am most nervous about creating the one-page profile for each home since I feel that it is the area that I have least experience in. I think I will be needing all the help I can get once I reach that step of the project.

If you're curious about what NWSDS is and the services that they offer, feel free to visit their website nwsds.org

The office building on a rare sunny Oregon day