一家人手拉手的剪影. 图片来源:iStock.
“Everyone should have someone in their life who cares about them,维多利亚·塔克说。, 专门从事寄养和收养工作的社会工作者.
在过去的十年里，她一直信奉这句座右铭, connecting children with families in Massachusetts as a leader at state agencies and social service organizations since 2013.
塔克,B.A.’12, M.S.W.2013年，目前主管收养单位在 小流浪者之家这是一家位于波士顿的非营利儿童和家庭服务机构. In the past, she’s matched kids in foster care with adoptive families for the 儿童和家庭部 和 马萨诸塞州收养资源交易所.
“家庭不仅仅意味着血缘,塔克说。, 谁持有家谱证书. “Helping to find people who can step up and be a part of a child’s life even if they can’t commit to doing adoption is something I’m really passionate about.”
她在收养界的渊源可以追溯到2009年, during her freshman year as a human development and psychology major at 太阳城网赌平台.
It was then that her academic adviser told her that she “sounds like a social worker” and suggested she find a summer job in the helping profession. 塔克听从了他的建议, taking an internship at a private adoption agency on Cape Cod and working with orphaned children from Ukraine who were living with families in Massachusetts.
“I helped the children maintain connections with their host families and made sure they had someone sending them holiday cards and birthday cards,塔克回忆道. “这就是它开始的地方. 我当时想，‘这就是我想做的.’”
她报名参加了 B.A./M.S.W. 双学位课程 her sophomore year and chose to focus her studies in the School of Social Work on 儿童、青年和家庭—one of six academic pathways that include specialized coursework and field placements.
Tucker completed her first field practicum at The 首页 for Little Wanderers, providing support to families who were at risk of losing their kids to the 儿童和家庭部.
She says the experience taught her the value of honoring and respecting families where they were on their journeys, 她不希望他们在那里. “These were families that wanted to keep their children in their home, 但是他们在挣扎,塔克说。. “And so learning how to meet people where they’re at and not expecting them to be able to rise to a certain level because of my expectations was something my supervisor really helped me with.”
维多利亚塔克. 礼貌的照片.
这是她今天在局里的职责之一, Tucker visits foster homes to see how kids are doing in their new environment. She has a good idea of how children are faring before she checks in—she knows if they’ve been getting A’s on their tests in school, 例如, or whether they’ve been making friends in their new neighborhood—and she uses that knowledge to inform the first thing she says when greeting them.
Tucker honed this strategy in Clinical Practice with Children and Families—the same course that she’s taught as a part-time faculty member in BCSSW since January 2022.
“We would go around the room and explain what we would say to a child the first time we ever met them,她回忆道。. “我每次去看孩子的时候都会想起这句话, 因为这将为你接下来的访问做准备.”
Tucker often uses her experiences in the field to aid her teaching. 在一堂课上, which focuses in part on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, she brings up the case of a child who would pull papers off walls as he spun into her office and struggled to sit still.
塔克要求学生们思考其他问题, 除了多动症, might be going on in the child’s life to elicit such erratic behavior. She advises them to build a well-rounded understanding of the boy, 考虑到他在家里和学校的经历, 在做出诊断之前.
“学生们想要真实的例子，”塔克说. “Reading out of a textbook or watching a movie can be helpful sometimes, but they really want to know how the things they’re learning in class apply to real life.”
She tells her students that kids are fun to work with and pitches her pupils on the value of learning how to help children reach their full potential. “每个人都曾是孩子，”她说. “即使你想和成年人或老年人一起工作, I think it’s really important that you understand childhood and how the impacts of your early years can affect you as an adult.”
Since 2019, Tucker has given advice to aspiring social workers as a member of the BCSSW校友会. She volunteers as a mock interviewer to help soon-to-be-graduates practice their interviewing skills and considers herself a sounding board for students who aren’t sure what they want to do with their degree.
“A lot of students look to us for support,塔克说。, referring to the board members. “不管我们作为社会工作者的角色是什么, we can help students see the possibilities of the field in new and exciting ways.”