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Student Opportunities

Graduate and undergraduate students in helping profession academic tracks have an opportunity to complete their field experience with Roots Incorporated.

Our Impact

2750+

Intern hours of adoption-competency practice experience gained.

7

Interns trained in our program.

50+

Total hours directly delivering our content in live workshops and presentations.

Our Learning Paths

Adoptee Scholars

Students with an adoptive identity are supported in ethically incorporating their lived experience of being adopted into their work and professional identity.

Adjacent Scholars

Students with identities within the broader adoption community are supported in ethically incorporating their lived experience into their work and professional identity.

Accomplice Scholars

Studies without lived adoption experience are supported in using anti-oppressive research and practice to ethically incorporate adoption work into their professional identity.

Our Levels of Practice

Therapy Center for Transformative Growth

Roots Incorporated

Roots Incorporated

Micro Practice

Students looking for adoption-competent direct practice and clinical or case management experience can serve clients at our therapeutic practice.

Mezzo Practice

Students looking for adoption-competent experience with groups and workshops can join our ongoing projects at Roots Incorporated.

Macro Practice

Students looking for adoption-competent experience with research and advocacy can join our ongoing projects at Roots Incorporated.

Our Core Objectives

Each student crafts their own learning agreement based on their professional interests, their academic requirements, and what our practice setting offers. We have no formal job titles for interns to step into and fulfill for us. Supervisors work closely with interns using a professional job crafting framework to create their own job title, responsibilities, and projects.

EDUCATE

Adoption is a complex institution of global significance that spans across multiple professional and academic disciplines. Our interns play an important role in helping us locate, review, understand, and synthesize this literature to keep our multi-media project informed. Some of the other vital functions of our interns include:​

  • Complete trainings to increase their practice skills and competencies.

  • Review outside trainings offered commercially to evaluate them against our criteria for recommended adoption education.

  • Attend adoption community engagements to observe cultural norms, power dynamics, and best practices for adoption-related gathering and events.

  • Analyze media inquiry databases for pitches that fall within our scope of practice.

  • Follow ongoing state and federal pending child welfare legislation.

  • Interact with the political landscape of adoption and intersecting social justice issues.

CREATE

Adoption as an institution lacks a "centeredness" on the voices of adopted people. Part of addressing this need is to create resources where there currently aren't any. Some of the vital ways our interns help us create include: 

  • Develop thorough presentations and workshops for major professional conferences.

  • Formulate policy opinions on pending adoption or child welfare legislation.

  • Craft print and digital educational content that align with the student's internship-focused interests.

  • Create educational and outreach displays for our location's storefront windows.

  • Draft responses to media inquiries and interviews.

  • Contribute to the ongoing development of our post-adoption support program.

FACILITATE

Our students are able to take the content that they have been educated about and created and operationalize it into a real-world practice. Some recent ways our interns have worked with us to facilitate important events.

  • Adoption-competent genogram classes with adopted people.

  • Adoption-competent TV show discussion group series with adopted youth.

  • Two semester partnership in post-adoption support facilitation with a child welfare organization

  • Multiple professional workshop presentations at educational events and major conferences.

  • Contributions to oral history databases through interviews with adopted people.

  • Instagram live moderation for community "ask us anything" sessions.

LIBERATE

Roots Incorporated has multiple professional identity development objectives that we hope to impart to every student. Through achievement of these objectives, we feel confident in the ability of each of our students to serve adoptees and the broader adoption community in safe and ethical ways.

  • An understanding of the diversity of the adoptee community and its varying perspectives.

  • An understanding of axes of power and privilege that flow through adoption as a social institution.

  • An understanding of the social prototypes of identities in adoption and an ability to view adoptees through an intersectional lens. 

  • An understanding of anti-oppressive and anti-racist practice behaviors that privilege adoptee voices and perspectives.

  • An understanding of reflexive practices to decolonize thinking and biases about adopted people, their movements, their needs, and their loved ones.

  • An understanding of the historical and present personal and political social realities of adopted people globally.

Historically, we have worked exclusively with BSW and MSW students. However, we are open to accepting students from all relevant academic and career paths that align with our mission, vision, and values. To set up an interview for consideration to complete your internship with us, please refer to your university's protocol for students securing their own field placements. You may provide your field liason with our contact information as well.

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