Authorâs note: For those whoâve been following my blog throughout the summer, first of all, thank you. Your support, whether that be through words of encouragement, blurbs you think I could include, or even simply telling me that youâve subscribed, has meant much more than you know. Second, the tenth and final (sadly) blog will look a little different. You might see information Iâve already written about or people Iâve already described, and itâs going to be a bit more of a comprehensive narrative regarding my experiences this summer. Iâve spent a hearty two weeks gathering information, conducting interviews with staff, and writing my little tail off to pull this one together. Itâs been challenging, but one of my most rewarding pieces yet. My plan is to hopefully publish it in a local newspaper, which is why it might seem repetitive to you, but a first time reader would need the whole picture. So grab some coffee, sit down, and enjoy the last blog for a while.
Much love,
Sarah
On the corner of East Main Street and Kelton Avenue near downtown Columbus, sits a brick, medium sized, fairly unsuspecting building with a green and white sign out front that reads âSaint Vincent Family Services.â You wouldnât think much of it, probably, if you just walked by, and you might even call it ordinary. Inside, though, youâll find that itâs anything but.
I know this because Iâve spent the past 2 and a half months as a summer intern there, creating and leading weekly therapy-based activities with kids in Saint Vincent Prep Academy, a fully accredited school whose students are referred from their previous schools for behavioral challenges, and Residential, whose kids who have been removed from their homes and are in the custody of an Ohio county. Saint Vincent also provides foster care, outpatient family counseling, in-home care, and community family intervention, which connects families in need to available resources.
My journey at Saint Vincent began with a Google search for âPublic health internships near me,â which eventually led me to the Columbus Foundationâs Summer Fellowship Program. Theyâd match me with a nonprofit fitting my professional interests, it was during my summer break, and it was paid â it seemed too good to be true. So, I decided to apply, and I ranked Saint Vincent Family Services as my top choice organization. A few weeks later, I received an email stating that I had moved on to the second round of the application, and a few weeks after that, I had an interview with SVFS.
It was on Microsoft Teams, but I was fine with that, because I lived in Morrison Tower at Ohio State, built in 1962 and lovingly nicknamed âDirty Morry,â and I didnât have a car. So there I sat in Room 526, getting a bona fide glimpse into the world of Saint Vincent Family Services.
My interviewers were Catherine Sherman, Fundraising and Grants Coordinator, and Sara Russell, Director of Community Engagement and Marketing, both of whom carried a can-do attitude, a smiling face, and plenty of words of encouragement after I told them in my interview, âJust so you know, I have absolutely no experience working with these kind of kids.â The conversation was sort of paradoxical; I, the only-2-years-under-my-belt college student, was hesitant to accept my first choice of an organization, and the very established registered nonprofit teetered on the verge of trying to convince me to come. But I said yes, on the contingency that Iâd get a tour of the facility first.
I remember the tour, and the thing that stuck out to me most was that the place looked normal. It didnât look like somewhere youâd send your kid if theyâd been referred because they couldnât sit still, or they always yelled out in class, or they flipped a chair in a burst of frustration. Sara even told me later that a lot of parents tour the school with their kids, expecting it to feel scary, and hoping it might convince their kid to start behaving better. But it backfires, because Saint Vincent is a friendly place to be. Itâs got a gym, a cafeteria, colorful hallways, and an enclosed courtyard playground with blue rubber flooring right at the center of it all.Â
At the end of the tour, Sara and Catherine sat me down in the break room. âSo what do you think? Could you see yourself here?â Sara asked me, to which I replied, âYeah, I mean, yeah, I could.â So it was official: Sarah Weglarz, Summer Intern at Saint Vincent Family Services.
It wouldnât be proper journalism if I didnât tell you the truth, though, so I will: the first week made me nervous. I felt like I was being introduced to 10 new people every day (because I was), I helped design and prepare for a donor event called Returning to our Roots (marketing is not for me), and my interactions with the kids were far and few between. Iâd consider myself to be cautiously optimistic, but by Friday, I thought, If this is what the rest of the summer is going to be like, I think Iâm ready to be done.
My pessimism eventually began to evaporate, though, after I realized that you canât get the hang of a job in a day (much to my disappointment), and I finally began to form some friendships. If you Google âShould I be friends with my boss?â, youâre met with a resounding No and this sentence from CNBC: âNo matter how great of a relationship you have with your boss, itâs generally not the best idea to be friends with them.â But Iâd counter that, and say that Sara was my first, and dare I say only, friend through the early weeks of summer. She was one of those people that you just meet and love, and you see other people gravitate toward. I thought, If anyone is gonna have my back here, I sure am glad itâs Sara.
During one conversation I had with her, I asked Sara to take me through a day in her life, and this was her response:Â
âOn the external side of things, itâs a lot of just coordination and communication around the services that we offer, who we are, what we do, [and] getting people connected with us and our work. And on the internal side of things, itâs a lot of communication, some change management work around when things are happening at the agency. And if someone is like, âHow do I say this?â theyâre like, âAsk Sara!â So I feel like I get pulled into a lot of those things. And while marketing and community engagement is a big external factor, it does take a lot of internal coordination with program leaders to be like, âWhat do you need for your program? How can I support you?â So, itâs definitely a supportive role: what do you need, and how can I help you get there?â
I think that sums up Sara perfectly. A jack of all trades, you might say, but also as supportive as they come.
A few offices down the hall from Sara and I lived Joe Chupp, Care Coordination Manager. Before I became friends with Joe, I only knew two things about him: he had a white noise machine outside his door, and he loved plants, because you could see about 20 of them in his office if you walked by and the door was open. I interacted with Joe sparingly the first month, but I started saying hi to him when Iâd see him in the hallway or when heâd come in to talk to Sara and Iâd happen to be there.
A few things struck me about Joe, one of them being his candor. The first time I really conversed with him was when he knocked on our office door to let Sara know that, not only had he broke one of the zippers on a bag we used to transport materials for tabling events, but he spilled coffee on the table cloth, and, by the way, do you think you could get that stain out? Coming in close second, though, was his sarcasm. On the very last day of my internship, I ran into Joe on the way up to my office. I was dressed up in slacks and a white cowl neck top, on my way back from my final presentation at the Columbus Foundation. I said, âJoe, this might be the last time I see you for a while!â Joe just looked at me. âMan, I really love people who just donât look nice at all and have no idea what theyâre doing with their lives and arenât goal driven one bit,â to which I replied, âYep, thatâs me Joe. I actually just rolled out of bed.â Beneath all that candidness and sarcasm, though, is someone that cares a lot about what he does.
âWe live in a world where there is such a disparity, an economic disparity, economic inequality. We see more people below the poverty line than there are the one percenters. When we can create a support system for a family, when we can help them connect with resources, that is helping them build equity. Everyone, everyone, deserves to live a life where, to live above poverty, to live equitably. And my team is helping them, in some ways, do that. So thatâs why Iâm really passionate about what we do.â
In short, the Care Coordination team goes out into the community and helps connect families with resources they might not know are available, which means that Joe and his team also get a firsthand look into the challenges Saint Vincent families face.
âPoverty, lower socioeconomic neighborhoods, violence, criminal activity, discrimination based upon their culture or who they are. I would say that mental health-wise, we see a lot of depression, severe depression, not just from the parents, but from the children. Theyâve been in this transgenerational cycle of [not having] the resources, or the motivation to pick themselves up, or the resources, so thatâs kind of where we come in to get out of their funk. And so that’s one thing we can do, is help them break that cycle.â
Joeâs work, though impactful, is just a small part of Saint Vincent, and if you peel back yet another layer, youâd see Prep Academy. Itâs large, with capacity to hold about 170 kids, who attend school there from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and itâs where I spent most of my time in June.
On the second floor of Prep Academy in Room 217, youâll find Debbie McBroom, a 35 year veteran of Saint Vincent. Ms. Debbie has seen it all. Sheâs seen staff come and go, sometimes in a single day when theyâve decided, This job is not for me. Sheâs seen kids walk up and down the hallways, cussing at her, and sheâs seen kids come to Saint Vincent who need more help than they can give. Thereâs no better teacher than experience, though, and thatâs what makes Ms. Debbie so good at her job. Sheâs patient, compassionate, and meets the kids exactly where theyâre at. And, not surprisingly, the kids respond to someone like that. I think I learned more from Ms. Debbie in a month about how to treat these kids than I could learn in a lifetime anywhere else. The last week of my internship, Ms. Debbie asked me if I had ever considered becoming a group clinician, because I was a natural, really good. I hadnât, but I think that was the best compliment Iâd gotten all summer.
In the rooms right below Ms. Debbie on the first floor lived Mr. Ray, an ABS, or adaptive behavior specialist, who floats between preschool, kindergarten, and first grade. The first thing that struck me about Mr. Ray was his positivity. Iâve walked past him a lot this summer, but never without a high five, a hug, or a âMS. SA-SA-SA-SA-SARAHHH!â
Another thing you should know about Mr. Ray is that people like him. I asked him once why he thinks that is, and he paused for a moment, and said, âYou know Ms. Sarah, Iâm me.â And itâs trueăźMr. Ray has the perfect combination of characteristics going for him. He was diagnosed with ADHD when he was 6, so he knows what itâs like to be educated in a system not designed for kids like him. He has good people skills, he recognizes the importance of building relationships, and he simply has a passion for working with kids.
Mr. Rayâs people skills also came in handy for me, because he knows everyone, and not only that, but he introduced me to everyone too. One of those people was Mr. Ivan, another ABS and one of Mr. Rayâs close friends at Saint Vincent, and who became my friend, too, by the end of the summer. Mr. Ivan was quieter than Mr. Ray, but he still carried the same enthusiasm, maybe in a slightly more composed way, but there nonetheless. I asked him toward the end of the summer if heâd ever had a particularly impactful experience since starting at Saint Vincent. His story was simple, but it stuck with me.
âThis girl that I work with, she came in really confused about her home situation and not being happy there, and her behavior had been real up and down over there because of the living situation. But, she told me I think after [about] a month of working with me that her behavior had really changed at home because of the things I showed her that she can really use to cope. Sheâs using those things at home, and itâs really working for her.â
Mr. Ivan was beaming when he told me that. He was proud, I think, that heâd been able to make a real difference in someoneâs life, but also proud of the girl, that sheâd been able to apply what she was learning and take it home to a less-than-ideal situation.
The Principal of Prep Academy is Ann Green. I really liked Ann, and itâs not difficult to feel the love she has for the kids. As she told a story about one of them she remembered fondly, or a moment sheâd never forget, sheâd smile, and maybe look at a picture or two sheâd pinned on the bulletin board next to her desk. Sara told me once that Ann would be one of those people whoâd sit at dinner and could tell stories about the kids for hours. The thing I love most about Ann, though, is that she loves her job.
âIt sounds corny, but you make a difference. When I came to Saint Vincent, I didnât know how long I would be here, but I truly fell in love with the vision and the mission that we have, the diversity in the staff, and everyone’s true value for what they do. Itâs really not hard to get buy-in here. And, as I have had opportunities presented to me over the past year, two and a half years, just the relationships Iâve made with the staff, I canât imagine myself being anywhere else. It almost makes me think that, the education piece, if I ever get tired of that, I may go down the road of mental health for my doctorate or something like that, just because I truly do see how important it is, as scaffolding as anything else for these children, and their families.â
Residential, on the other side of the building, operates a little differently. Kris Denney, Residential Program Director, gave me a good overview of the way that kids in Residential end up there.
âI think we have kids from six different counties right now, and probably about a third are Franklin county, but we take kids from all over Ohio. And typically, our kids have been in the foster care system, and child welfare is involved, and theyâve been removed from the home, and the county is requesting residential, because other levels of care have not worked for that child. They may have been in like kinship care and foster care, and theyâre not doing well in those placements, and they come to us.â
The staff in Residential usually work in shifts, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., and 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., and housing is set up similarly to a college dorm, with two kids per room and a common bathroom at the end of the hall. Itâs much smaller than Prep Academy too, at only about 15 kids over the summer with the capacity to hold up to 35.
Some kids live at Saint Vincent, and some just go to school there, but all of them face a similar challenge: self-esteem. As I was talking with staff before I began writing this, I asked them all the same question, which was âDo you think the kids that come here have stereotypes about themselves?â I was met with a resounding yes: the kids at Saint Vincent come in and think, Iâm bad. Iâm mean. People at my old school? They donât like me. In fact, Susan Lewis Kaylor, President and CEO of Saint Vincent Family Services, told me a deeply personal and meaningful story that I think illustrates, first, that even the higher ups in an organization often have personal connections to the services they provide, and second, it perfectly depicts the way that kids at Saint Vincent view themselves.
âWhat brought my husband and I here is that one of my preschoolers got kicked out of preschool because he just couldnât stop moving, he couldnât stop talking. He was a great kid, and almost got kicked out of kindergarten and first grade. For me, I had worked in the behavioral health field, and thought he was the most brilliant kid Iâd ever met, and I could not believe anyone wanted to kick him out. We lived in a very privileged [area], I had skill, I had experience, I didnât understand that he was disruptive. I was blind, to be quite honest. Iâll be honest, we came here out of sheer desperation. I cried every day of first grade. My phone would blow up, he would be in the principalâs office again. He was wandering. He was in the bathroom blowing bubbles. He couldnât stand to be in the classroom. He was bored out of his mind. They viewed that as defiant, and they viewed that as being completely disruptive. What finally brought me to my knees is that my child started referring to himself as, Iâm one of the bad boys. I sit in the hallway with all the other bad boys. It still chokes me up. Our children here donât have the affluence, they donât have everything that my children did in the suburbs, and believe me, these children are told that every day of their life from multiple sources.â
No child should ever have to feel that way about themselves, and every child deserves a school that looks out for them, and sends this message: I know that you donât learn the way I do, but that doesnât mean we canât make room for you at the table.
And thatâs what I think Saint Vincent tries to be, a place of acceptance for kids who couldnât find it anywhere else. They make good kids betterâthatâs actually their slogan, and I think itâs true. I remember one particular instance at the beginning of the summer where I was sitting in the corner, in Ms. Debbieâs class actually, next to a kid who was coloring. Someone else mouthed off to him, and he got mad. His fists tightened, and his lips fell into a line. But then, he said this: âMs. Sarah, Iâm feeling really angry right now, but Iâm going to take some deep breaths to help regulate myself.â And, amazingly, he did. He didnât push his desk, he didnât throw anything, and he didnât yell back at the other kid. He just took some deep breaths, and a few minutes later, he was fine.
Itâs a long and windy road to get to where that kid ended up, though, and running a place like Saint Vincent doesnât come without its challenges. Megan Obermeyer, Prep Academy Program director, told me that sometimes, Saint Vincent just canât provide a child with all the support they need to thrive.
âOftentimes itâs supports outside of the home, and their basic needs arenât being met. And we have some really great supports, and we are able to provide a lot of great resources and funding. However, if we canât connect with families to offer that help, sometimes we just kind of miss the mark on that and weâll see kids discharged who we know we could have had a great impact on, we just couldnât connect for one reason or another and thatâs hard.â
Kids face learning challenges, too, because each day in Prep Academy requires two and a half hours of group therapy, cutting academic time almost in half. Ann Green, Prep Academy principal, also told me that itâs sometimes difficult to track academic progress because the kids only stay for about a year. This means thereâs no year-by-year data to show that an individual childâs scores are improving in a specific area. Ann also told me that the short stay sometimes lends itself to challenges with relationship building.
âOnce you leave here, you donât always know what happens. In a typical school setting, they leave your class and you watch them go through the rest of the building and grow, or you may see siblings and things like that. So sometimes you spend a lot of time building a relationship, but when itâs over, itâs really over.â
When I asked staff about challenges they faced, the person I really wanted to hear from was Ms. Debbie. Sheâd been there a long time, and we were friends, so I figured Iâd get an honest answer. I talked with her and the ABS next door, Ms. Nakia, whose answer was short and sweet.
âI wish they would know what really goes on, before they just sign up.â
Ms. Debbie said something similar.
âI mean, this job is not for everybody. Iâve seen people come and stay one day and walk out. So the staff, when they come in here, I think itâs important that weâre telling them the truth about how a real day goes with these kids, and how many behaviors we really have here. A lot of people [are] shocked when they realize what theyâre coming into. I mean honesty is key, they should be honest with them. This is not that easy. You have to have patience, a whole lot of patience actually, to work with these kids.â
If youâre thinking, âYeah, okay. I could walk in and do this in a heartbeat,â I get it. Itâs hard to really understand what goes on at Saint Vincent without having been there. So, I started asking around: if you could tell the world one thing about Saint Vincent, about your job, or about the kids here, what would it be? The answers I got were insightful, even for me, after I had already been working there for a few months.
Some answers have been edited for brevity.
âUltimately, itâs just about the relationships . . . itâs why our kids will do well and itâs also why they will do poorly. They need to feel those relationships like you mentioned that stigma, a lot of our kids will say, âI was the worst kid at my old schoolâ or âI was the troublemakerâ . . . and the way [schools] talk about [kids] can sometimes sound negative. And I always try to explain to schools, you have the one kid in your class who needs the most support. Our classrooms are totally made up of those kids. We have 10 of those kids together in one classroom. Our kids come here, and theyâre no longer viewed as the odd one man out, theyâre just like everybody else, they just need support. So I think if, when youâre curious, when you take the time to build relationships, our kids just want the same thing everybody else wants.â
– Megan Obermeyer, Prep Academy Program Director
âOne of our slogans is, We make good kids better. Theyâre not bad kids, they had bad situations brought upon them without them even having a choice in it, so just making, you know, seeing the good in every kid, every person, every adult, whatever, seeing the good in them and building from that. You know, not focusing on the negative. Yes, thereâs always that negative piece in there but you gotta refocus. You know, everybody has good in them, I like to try to see the good in everybody, and not focus on the negative and then kinda go from there.â
– Brad Meyers, Prep Academy Program Director
âI really love my job . . . I love the people I work with. I truly believe in our vision and our mission, and I can see the differences that weâre making. Being a part of something thatâs bigger than me, itâs really nice. You know, there are days that are hard, and there are days that are full of wins. But, Iâve never pulled into the parking lot, and said I donât want to be here today. Iâve never had that feeling. Granted I still take my PTO and take care of myself and stuff, but I think just everyoneâs understanding that mental health is so important and these children, we have to be there for these children because there isnât anyone else who is.â
– Ann Green, Prep Academy Principal
âIâd say the majority of social workers are obviously not in it for the salary, so whatâs their motivation for coming into the field? And that is genuinely to help either everyone that they can, or a specific population. Whatever theyâre drawn to out of college. I have found that serving others has been the most fulfilling thing Iâve ever done in my life, whether itâs children, families, my team, my supervisor, including myself. Just focusing, prioritizing my self care, taking care of myself. Serving others. I think that if other people had that mindset, I think that we would be a lot better off.â
– Joe Chupp, Care Coordination Manager
âI think I would say that thereâs a reason Saint Vincentâs has been here for so long, and doing what they do so well, and itâs the same reason that I think they attract some really good quality people. This is the first residential program that I stepped into, every residential program can be improved, but this is the first one I stepped into that wasnât a failing program.â
– Kris Denney, Residential Program Director
âI would say invest in the children around you, in your sphere of influence, because it really doesn’t take much for a childâs life to be completely derailed. You know, it takes just, sometimes it can just take one decision, not one, but one directive, one life changing decision from a caregiver. And the cliche that says it takes a village to raise a child, the support that we give the kids, whether itâs nephews, or just people, friends, friendsâ kids, our own children, just invest in the kids around you, because those interactions, they really do go a long way.â
– Devin Fate, Residential Group Clinician
âItâs a great question, Ms. Sarah, because itâs such a loaded answer, but Iâm gonna just speak from my heart . . . I think that Saint Vincentâs, especially in the summer, it provides safety, number one. This is a very, very safe environment. You have to have a key card to get in, you canât just walk in these doors, even if youâre a parent picking up your child, there are sets of doors that you have to go through before you would even be exposed to a child . . . The second thing is that these kids get breakfast and lunch every day. Everybodyâs financial situation, everybodyâs parents might not be able to put hot food on the table. Here, you are guaranteed a hot meal. Every day. And I think just the last thing for me is that . . . everybody does something different to bring a different completeness to our children . . . the coping mechanisms, the groups, the group clinicians, we hope that all of that combined, we [can be] a place to kind of restructure your educational experience.â
– Ray Lynch, Adaptive Behavior Specialist
âOur kids are awesome, they are incredibly amazing. Our families are really invested. Some of our families are exhausted. They just are tired and they need a little bit of guidance and support or even just some validation, like, Yeah this is hard, and they want to do well. Honestly, they want to do well. The families want to do well, the kids want to do well. So, I think coming in with that mindset is really important and valuable, for all of us, to understand families do well when they can, the kids do well when they can.â
– Laurie Sparks-Dennison, Clinical Manager (Prep Academy)
âPerseverance. For everybody. The children, the staff, because everybody has their days where itâs rough, you donât wanna come, you donât wanna show up, you donât wanna be your best, but as a staff, and as a role model, you gotta show that you can have a bad day and still do your best, even if itâs not 100%, youâre still doing your best.â
– Ivan Hill, Adaptive Behavior Specialist
âI would say to not believe the stigma of a nonprofit, of our name, Saint Vincent, of the work that we do. It can be really easy to think, nonprofit: youâre overworked and underpaid. And sometimes it can feel that way, depending on what work youâre doing. I know that. But, I donât know, there are so many other things about working in this space that I think are valuable, and I think the nonprofit industry is hopefully moving more towards generously supporting their employees. People think weâre some Catholic, religious, stuffy organization when in actuality itâs one of the quirkiest places to work. Everyone is just unique and excels as individuals, so you wouldnât think that I think just by hearing our name. And then people have a stigma just about the work that we do, and I feel like when you come here, and you see this space, and you see the kids and all of that, you say, oh, this isnât an institution, these kids arenât bad.â
– Sara Russell, Director of Community Engagement and Marketing
âWe can do hard things, and we can all get stronger, if we have hope. And thatâs what I feel every day when I walk in. We all do hard things every single day here. The kids do hard things. We have hope that itâs gonna get better.â
– Susan Lewis Kaylor, President & CEO
Susan said it best: we can do hard things. I got back to Ohio State on Saturday (luckily not in Morrison Tower again), and Iâve been telling people that my internship has been the most complex but enjoyable challenge Iâve tackled in a while. It required planning and communication ability, while simultaneously figuring the most effective ways to convince the staff they could trust me and that I (mostly) knew what I was doing, while also trying to understand the challenges the kids were facing, and how best I could relate to them. I learned that not everyone will like you at first, and that sometimes all it takes is a listening ear and some compassion for people to realize youâre on their side. I learned that just because you have a degree doesnât mean you know more, and just because you come from different backgrounds doesnât mean you canât join forces to meet a common goal. I learned that kids are just people who need a little extra TLC, and that most adults are just people who are really kids at heart. Most importantly though, I grew a passion for the kids, and I learned that if you love them, they love you right back.
Columbus Foundation Fellowship Programs 