Week One: Personal Contributions

After my first week working for Reaching Milestones Through Therapy Inc., I have made a lot of contributions to their communications and social media outlets. Reaching Milestones is a small business and I was hired in part to help start up and improve their social media presence. This past week I have contributed to this task by rebuilding their website (reachingmilestones.net). I had to call the website provider and make the request and transaction for the new website design and build. I also created a facebook page, LinkedIn profile, and Instagram account for Reaching Milestones. Additionally, I completed a three-plus hour online course recognizing and reporting child abuse for mandated and permissive reporting in Pennsylvania. This course meets ACT 31 of 2014 training requirements and meets the Recognizing Child Abuse and Mandated reporting components of ACT 126 of 2013 training requirements. I also had to have criminal background check and fingerprint test, which will all allow me to follow around the therapists that work for Reaching Milestones in order to take pictures and document client stories on the social media accounts. Further, these tests will allow me to enter the homes of the clients in order to observe and evaluate the therapists as well. I also revamped the family survey/service evaluation by putting the answers on a likert-scale using qualtrics to replace the original ‘yes’ or ‘no’ options.

On the less glamorous side of the internship, earlier in the week, I was tasked with the job to organize the room with all of the therapy materials, which includes toys, books, games, puzzles, etc. After organizing all the materials, I created labels for everything in their respective locations. Next, I had to sort through hundreds of files to determine which were necessary to keep or shred, and then organize them all into categories such as ‘Autism,’ ‘Evaluation Material and Surveys,’ ‘Research and Case Studies,’ etc. Once all the files were organized, I then alphabetized them.

My first week working for Reaching Milestones Through Therapy has been positive so far. I have only had good interactions with my supervisor and co-workers. Fortunately, my boss has been very receptive and excited about all of my ideas to contribute to their social media presence. The co-worker, who I worked with to help revamp that website contributed great ideas to the project and it was a team effort to create the final project, which my supervisor was very pleased with. I’m excited to continue working on these projects and gain deeper insights into the leader-follower relationships and dynamics within the organization. After only one week, I have been focusing on finding my barring and getting comfortable within the organization, so I am excited to see how my insights and perspectives of the organization evolves over the course of my internship!