AOICWO Blog
From Fearful to Confident
For my I Made A Difference Moment story, I think of one family in particular. This mother had just welcomed her first child and was feeling overwhelmed. She worried she wasn’t doing enough and doubted her ability to provide the right foundation for her baby. As our...
Small Routines, Big Impact: How Structure Transformed a Family’s Life
I’ve been working with a young Mom and her 2-year-old child for a few months. They recently moved into an apartment, and Mom was feeling overwhelmed with everything she had going on. She is working with other service providers, trying to assist her mother with her...
From Struggle to Strength: A Mother’s Fight for Her Family and the Power of Being Understood
In our line of work, I often meet people at their lowest- exhausted, ashamed and feeling completely defeated. One client I'll never forget had just experienced her second removal. Mom sat across from me shoulders hunched, tears streaming down her face convinced that...
Supporting Families Through Family Team Meetings
I helped facilitate several Family Team Meetings fora family as they went from no parenting time to supervised parenting time. Dad eventually received unsupervised parenting time while the mother maintained supervised parenting time. I had the chance to talk with the...
A Family’s Journey Towards Restoration
In the spring of 2024, I received a call from a foster care supervisor asking if I had any openings in my schedule. The worker had just received a case and she wanted me to work with the parents. I met the parents at a family team meeting in March 2024, about a month...
Building Lifelong Relationships through Mentorship
When I joined the Youth In Transition team, my role was to interact with unmatched youth. That’s when I met Samantha. I told her that I would meet with her twice a month. At the time, Samantha was a high school student, dual enrolled, living in her own apartment and...
Lives Forever Changed
In late spring, I received a referral for a mother whose children were all under the age of four. As I began to understand the many needs of the family and outline the situation that had landed the children of this woman in foster care, my heart broke for her. In...
Making Life Changes for the Family
In the PACT program, I had the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of my clients. My client was frustrated that she was stuck in the same old visitation room at MDDHS for every visit. She wondered why she didn't have the right to take her children out to do...
Sometimes you just have to be there.
When coming in as a new worker, it can indeed be challenging to pick up a case that someone else has previously handled. The family and child already developed a relationship and trust with the previous case worker, and you are an entirely new person to them. Honestly...
Two changed lives
I received a referral in October of 2023 for a father and his son. At the first contact with the caseworker, I discovered the child had been in foster care, at this point, for almost 15 months. The case was originally opened due to the mother’s neglect and drug...
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Phone: (989) 839-0534
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PO Box 2225
Midland, MI 48641-2225
