Diana joined GO in September 2006 and has been instrumental in expanding GO’s Social Services component to allow for greater outreach to GO parents and students. In the following interview, Diana explains how the Social Services programming functions and recounts new developments.

Question: What does the Social Services component aim to do?

Diana: The mission of Social Services at the GO Project is to help educate parents on how to best advocate for their children.

Q: How do you go about achieving this goal?

D: We do this through various interventions. During the GO Summer, we have weekly workshops for parents, individual counseling for children and/or parents and weekly socialization groups for students who have difficulty with transitioning to GO in the summer. All workshops are run by summer staff social workers and this year we will have an additional intern from NYU.

Q: What kind of workshops do you provide?

D: We have groups that run for both parents and children. During both the Summer program and Saturday program, the social work staff conducts parent workshops on topics ranging from Special Education in the public schools to more emotional topics like separation and loss or preparing children for the transition to middle school. There is a Single Parent Group, Immigrant Support Group, and PaSSaGe (Parents and Students School And GO) for children with ADHD and other impulsivity issues. Additionally, there is a small short-term weekly topic-driven group designed in collaboration between parents and a social work intern. We also provide short term counseling for parents and children on Saturdays. Since our three social work staff members are all bilingual in either Spanish or Mandarin we are able to provide several groups in these languages.

Q: Do you work in partnership with any other organizations?

D: GO works closely with the NYU School of Social Work to enhance the services that we provide to our families. I took a class last fall in supervision and as a result have been able to expand GO’s services to our families with four interns this year. Through our new social work intern initiative, we are also able to provide year-long counseling in our partner public schools during the week to GO students.

Q: Since the social work staff and NYU interns are not in the office full-time, how do you supervise them?

D: I meet weekly for clinical supervision with all three of the Social Services staff members and four interns to insure that our overall clinical work is consistent and that the staff and the interns are growing in their clinical skills. I also meet weekly with one of two supervisors who help me to both clinically manage the staff and to develop new ideas and initiatives appropriate for a multi-disciplinary organization like GO.

Q: What is the Social Services’ goal for the near future?
D: Our goal for this year is to continue with four interns and three social workers. We will run the same number of groups and individual sessions and will add a type of GO Project social work training program. The staff will be trained on how to run a GO Project group, specifically a socialization group for different ages. There will also be more in-depth training on specific strategies that work for children and adults, such as play therapy techniques or topics around parenting.