Homeless

Homeless

Courtney Rich
>Field Experience
>May 12, 2008
>
> I must admit I was completely dreading the fact that I had to do 145
hours of volunteering for one course, however it turned out to be the
greatest endeavor. I found Cuidando Los Ninos through a former boss,
and I quickly got a phone call over to them. They had only one request
and that was a TB shot, and I was on my way.
> I began working with the infants. These adorable innocent children
just struck me the first day I arrived. I could not fathom where these
children had been or could be resting their heads tonight. I wanted to
meet their mothers and fathers, and see with my own eyes where these
children came from. I just wanted to understand how does this happen?
>Where does it go 'oh so terribly' wrong? It was such a strange
sensation to just want to know everything about each and every one of
those infants. So with that I began asking questions. Cuidando Los
Ninos has a very strict privacy and confidentiality policy, so the
information I needed was going to be hard to attain without being an
employee, and only as a volunteer. I asked if I could expand my help by
doing some of the filing or paper work so that I could get a feel for
what the situations were within the family unit. With that I sat for
three hours waiting to get my finger prints done so that I could be
privy to the information I was about to see. Still as a volunteer, I
began working on a program called HMIS, which stands for Homeless
Management Intake System. My eyes hurt the first day after I got done
inputting about 20 families information into the system. I realized my
eyes hurt not because I was not used to staring at a computer, but
rather it was because my eyes were wide open the whole time from
astonishment.
> A sad 85% of the families enrolled at Cuidando Los Ninos are homeless
because of Domestic Violence. There were only four families enrolled at
Cuidando that had a father...

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