Author’s note: For those who’ve been following my blog throughout the summer, first of all, thank you. Your support, whether that be through words of encouragement, blurbs you think I could include, or even simply telling me that you’ve subscribed, has meant much more than you know. Second, the tenth and final (sadly) blog will look a little different. You might see information I’ve already written about or people I’ve already described, and it’s going to be a bit more of a comprehensive narrative regarding my experiences this summer. I’ve spent a hearty two weeks gathering information, conducting interviews with staff, and writing my little tail off to pull this one together. It’s been challenging, but one of my most rewarding pieces yet. My plan is to hopefully publish it in a local newspaper, which is why it might seem repetitive to you, but a first time reader would need the whole picture. So grab some coffee, sit down, and enjoy the last blog for a while. 

Much love,

Sarah

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On the corner of East Main Street and Kelton Avenue near downtown Columbus, sits a brick, medium sized, fairly unsuspecting building with a green and white sign out front that reads “Saint Vincent Family Services.” You wouldn’t think much of it, probably, if you just walked by, and you might even call it ordinary. Inside, though, you’ll find that it’s anything but. 

I know this because I’ve spent the past 2 and a half months as a summer intern there, creating and leading weekly therapy-based activities with kids in Saint Vincent Prep Academy, a fully accredited school whose students are referred from their previous schools for behavioral challenges, and Residential, whose kids who have been removed from their homes and are in the custody of an Ohio county. Saint Vincent also provides foster care, outpatient family counseling, in-home care, and community family intervention, which connects families in need to available resources. 

My journey at Saint Vincent began with a Google search for “Public health internships near me,” which eventually led me to the Columbus Foundation’s Summer Fellowship Program. They’d match me with a nonprofit fitting my professional interests, it was during my summer break, and it was paid — it seemed too good to be true. So, I decided to apply, and I ranked Saint Vincent Family Services as my top choice organization. A few weeks later, I received an email stating that I had moved on to the second round of the application, and a few weeks after that, I had an interview with SVFS.  

It was on Microsoft Teams, but I was fine with that, because I lived in Morrison Tower at Ohio State, built in 1962 and lovingly nicknamed “Dirty Morry,” and I didn’t have a car. So there I sat in Room 526, getting a bona fide glimpse into the world of Saint Vincent Family Services. 

My interviewers were Catherine Sherman, Fundraising and Grants Coordinator, and Sara Russell, Director of Community Engagement and Marketing, both of whom carried a can-do attitude, a smiling face, and plenty of words of encouragement after I told them in my interview, “Just so you know, I have absolutely no experience working with these kind of kids.” The conversation was sort of paradoxical; I, the only-2-years-under-my-belt college student, was hesitant to accept my first choice of an organization, and the very established registered nonprofit teetered on the verge of trying to convince me to come. But I said yes, on the contingency that I’d get a tour of the facility first. 

I remember the tour, and the thing that stuck out to me most was that the place looked normal. It didn’t look like somewhere you’d send your kid if they’d been referred because they couldn’t sit still, or they always yelled out in class, or they flipped a chair in a burst of frustration. Sara even told me later that a lot of parents tour the school with their kids, expecting it to feel scary, and hoping it might convince their kid to start behaving better. But it backfires, because Saint Vincent is a friendly place to be. It’s got a gym, a cafeteria, colorful hallways, and an enclosed courtyard playground with blue rubber flooring right at the center of it all. 

At the end of the tour, Sara and Catherine sat me down in the break room. “So what do you think? Could you see yourself here?” Sara asked me, to which I replied, “Yeah, I mean, yeah, I could.” So it was official: Sarah Weglarz, Summer Intern at Saint Vincent Family Services. 

It wouldn’t be proper journalism if I didn’t tell you the truth, though, so I will: the first week made me nervous. I felt like I was being introduced to 10 new people every day (because I was), I helped design and prepare for a donor event called Returning to our Roots (marketing is not for me), and my interactions with the kids were far and few between. I’d consider myself to be cautiously optimistic, but by Friday, I thought, If this is what the rest of the summer is going to be like, I think I’m ready to be done. 

My pessimism eventually began to evaporate, though, after I realized that you can’t get the hang of a job in a day (much to my disappointment), and I finally began to form some friendships. If you Google “Should I be friends with my boss?”, you’re met with a resounding No and this sentence from CNBC: “No matter how great of a relationship you have with your boss, it’s generally not the best idea to be friends with them.” But I’d counter that, and say that Sara was my first, and dare I say only, friend through the early weeks of summer. She was one of those people that you just meet and love, and you see other people gravitate toward. I thought, If anyone is gonna have my back here, I sure am glad it’s Sara. 

During one conversation I had with her, I asked Sara to take me through a day in her life, and this was her response: 

“On the external side of things, it’s a lot of just coordination and communication around the services that we offer, who we are, what we do, [and] getting people connected with us and our work. And on the internal side of things, it’s a lot of communication, some change management work around when things are happening at the agency. And if someone is like, “How do I say this?” they’re like, “Ask Sara!” So I feel like I get pulled into a lot of those things. And while marketing and community engagement is a big external factor, it does take a lot of internal coordination with program leaders to be like, “What do you need for your program? How can I support you?” So, it’s definitely a supportive role: what do you need, and how can I help you get there?” 

I think that sums up Sara perfectly. A jack of all trades, you might say, but also as supportive as they come.

A few offices down the hall from Sara and I lived Joe Chupp, Care Coordination Manager. Before I became friends with Joe, I only knew two things about him: he had a white noise machine outside his door, and he loved plants, because you could see about 20 of them in his office if you walked by and the door was open. I interacted with Joe sparingly the first month, but I started saying hi to him when I’d see him in the hallway or when he’d come in to talk to Sara and I’d happen to be there. 

A few things struck me about Joe, one of them being his candor. The first time I really conversed with him was when he knocked on our office door to let Sara know that, not only had he broke one of the zippers on a bag we used to transport materials for tabling events, but he spilled coffee on the table cloth, and, by the way, do you think you could get that stain out? Coming in close second, though, was his sarcasm. On the very last day of my internship, I ran into Joe on the way up to my office. I was dressed up in slacks and a white cowl neck top, on my way back from my final presentation at the Columbus Foundation. I said, “Joe, this might be the last time I see you for a while!” Joe just looked at me. “Man, I really love people who just don’t look nice at all and have no idea what they’re doing with their lives and aren’t goal driven one bit,” to which I replied, “Yep, that’s me Joe. I actually just rolled out of bed.” Beneath all that candidness and sarcasm, though, is someone that cares a lot about what he does. 

“We live in a world where there is such a disparity, an economic disparity, economic inequality. We see more people below the poverty line than there are the one percenters. When we can create a support system for a family, when we can help them connect with resources, that is helping them build equity. Everyone, everyone, deserves to live a life where, to live above poverty, to live equitably. And my team is helping them, in some ways, do that. So that’s why I’m really passionate about what we do.”

In short, the Care Coordination team goes out into the community and helps connect families with resources they might not know are available, which means that Joe and his team also get a firsthand look into the challenges Saint Vincent families face. 

“Poverty, lower socioeconomic neighborhoods, violence, criminal activity, discrimination based upon their culture or who they are. I would say that mental health-wise, we see a lot of depression, severe depression, not just from the parents, but from the children. They’ve been in this transgenerational cycle of [not having] the resources, or the motivation to pick themselves up, or the resources, so that’s kind of where we come in to get out of their funk. And so that’s one thing we can do, is help them break that cycle.”

Joe’s work, though impactful, is just a small part of Saint Vincent, and if you peel back yet another layer, you’d see Prep Academy. It’s large, with capacity to hold about 170 kids, who attend school there from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and it’s where I spent most of my time in June.

On the second floor of Prep Academy in Room 217, you’ll find Debbie McBroom, a 35 year veteran of Saint Vincent. Ms. Debbie has seen it all. She’s seen staff come and go, sometimes in a single day when they’ve decided, This job is not for me. She’s seen kids walk up and down the hallways, cussing at her, and she’s seen kids come to Saint Vincent who need more help than they can give. There’s no better teacher than experience, though, and that’s what makes Ms. Debbie so good at her job. She’s patient, compassionate, and meets the kids exactly where they’re at. And, not surprisingly, the kids respond to someone like that. I think I learned more from Ms. Debbie in a month about how to treat these kids than I could learn in a lifetime anywhere else. The last week of my internship, Ms. Debbie asked me if I had ever considered becoming a group clinician, because I was a natural, really good. I hadn’t, but I think that was the best compliment I’d gotten all summer. 

In the rooms right below Ms. Debbie on the first floor lived Mr. Ray, an ABS, or adaptive behavior specialist, who floats between preschool, kindergarten, and first grade.  The first thing that struck me about Mr. Ray was his positivity. I’ve walked past him a lot this summer, but never without a high five, a hug, or a “MS. SA-SA-SA-SA-SARAHHH!” 

Another thing you should know about Mr. Ray is that people like him. I asked him once why he thinks that is, and he paused for a moment, and said, “You know Ms. Sarah, I’m me.” And it’s trueーMr. Ray has the perfect combination of characteristics going for him. He was diagnosed with ADHD when he was 6, so he knows what it’s like to be educated in a system not designed for kids like him. He has good people skills, he recognizes the importance of building relationships, and he simply has a passion for working with kids. 

Mr. Ray’s people skills also came in handy for me, because he knows everyone, and not only that, but he introduced me to everyone too. One of those people was Mr. Ivan, another ABS and one of Mr. Ray’s close friends at Saint Vincent, and who became my friend, too, by the end of the summer. Mr. Ivan was quieter than Mr. Ray, but he still carried the same enthusiasm, maybe in a slightly more composed way, but there nonetheless. I asked him toward the end of the summer if he’d ever had a particularly impactful experience since starting at Saint Vincent. His story was simple, but it stuck with me.

“This girl that I work with, she came in really confused about her home situation and not being happy there, and her behavior had been real up and down over there because of the living situation. But, she told me I think after [about] a month of working with me that her behavior had really changed at home because of the things I showed her that she can really use to cope. She’s using those things at home, and it’s really working for her.”

Mr. Ivan was beaming when he told me that. He was proud, I think, that he’d been able to make a real difference in someone’s life, but also proud of the girl, that she’d been able to apply what she was learning and take it home to a less-than-ideal situation.

The Principal of Prep Academy is Ann Green. I really liked Ann, and it’s not difficult to feel the love she has for the kids. As she told a story about one of them she remembered fondly, or a moment she’d never forget, she’d smile, and maybe look at a picture or two she’d pinned on the bulletin board next to her desk. Sara told me once that Ann would be one of those people who’d sit at dinner and could tell stories about the kids for hours. The thing I love most about Ann, though, is that she loves her job.

“It sounds corny, but you make a difference. When I came to Saint Vincent, I didn’t know how long I would be here, but I truly fell in love with the vision and the mission that we have, the diversity in the staff, and everyone’s true value for what they do. It’s really not hard to get buy-in here. And, as I have had opportunities presented to me over the past year, two and a half years, just the relationships I’ve made with the staff, I can’t imagine myself being anywhere else. It almost makes me think that, the education piece, if I ever get tired of that, I may go down the road of mental health for my doctorate or something like that, just because I truly do see how important it is, as scaffolding as anything else for these children, and their families.”

Residential, on the other side of the building, operates a little differently. Kris Denney, Residential Program Director, gave me a good overview of the way that kids in Residential end up there. 

“I think we have kids from six different counties right now, and probably about a third are Franklin county, but we take kids from all over Ohio. And typically, our kids have been in the foster care system, and child welfare is involved, and they’ve been removed from the home, and the county is requesting residential, because other levels of care have not worked for that child. They may have been in like kinship care and foster care, and they’re not doing well in those placements, and they come to us.”

The staff in Residential usually work in shifts, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., and 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., and housing is set up similarly to a college dorm, with two kids per room and a common bathroom at the end of the hall. It’s much smaller than Prep Academy too, at only about 15 kids over the summer with the capacity to hold up to 35. 

Some kids live at Saint Vincent, and some just go to school there, but all of them face a similar challenge: self-esteem. As I was talking with staff before I began writing this, I asked them all the same question, which was “Do you think the kids that come here have stereotypes about themselves?” I was met with a resounding yes: the kids at Saint Vincent come in and think, I’m bad. I’m mean. People at my old school? They don’t like me. In fact, Susan Lewis Kaylor, President and CEO of Saint Vincent Family Services, told me a deeply personal and meaningful story that I think illustrates, first, that even the higher ups in an organization often have personal connections to the services they provide, and second, it perfectly depicts the way that kids at Saint Vincent view themselves. 

“What brought my husband and I here is that one of my preschoolers got kicked out of preschool because he just couldn’t stop moving, he couldn’t stop talking. He was a great kid, and almost got kicked out of kindergarten and first grade. For me, I had worked in the behavioral health field, and thought he was the most brilliant kid I’d ever met, and I could not believe anyone wanted to kick him out. We lived in a very privileged [area], I had skill, I had experience, I didn’t understand that he was disruptive. I was blind, to be quite honest. I’ll be honest, we came here out of sheer desperation. I cried every day of first grade. My phone would blow up, he would be in the principal’s office again. He was wandering. He was in the bathroom blowing bubbles. He couldn’t stand to be in the classroom. He was bored out of his mind. They viewed that as defiant, and they viewed that as being completely disruptive. What finally brought me to my knees is that my child started referring to himself as, I’m one of the bad boys. I sit in the hallway with all the other bad boys. It still chokes me up. Our children here don’t have the affluence, they don’t have everything that my children did in the suburbs, and believe me, these children are told that every day of their life from multiple sources.”

No child should ever have to feel that way about themselves, and every child deserves a school that looks out for them, and sends this message: I know that you don’t learn the way I do, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make room for you at the table. 

And that’s what I think Saint Vincent tries to be, a place of acceptance for kids who couldn’t find it anywhere else. They make good kids better—that’s actually their slogan, and I think it’s true. I remember one particular instance at the beginning of the summer where I was sitting in the corner, in Ms. Debbie’s class actually, next to a kid who was coloring. Someone else mouthed off to him, and he got mad. His fists tightened, and his lips fell into a line. But then, he said this: “Ms. Sarah, I’m feeling really angry right now, but I’m going to take some deep breaths to help regulate myself.” And, amazingly, he did. He didn’t push his desk, he didn’t throw anything, and he didn’t yell back at the other kid. He just took some deep breaths, and a few minutes later, he was fine.  

It’s a long and windy road to get to where that kid ended up, though, and running a place like Saint Vincent doesn’t come without its challenges. Megan Obermeyer, Prep Academy Program director, told me that sometimes, Saint Vincent just can’t provide a child with all the support they need to thrive. 

“Oftentimes it’s supports outside of the home, and their basic needs aren’t being met. And we have some really great supports, and we are able to provide a lot of great resources and funding. However, if we can’t connect with families to offer that help, sometimes we just kind of miss the mark on that and we’ll see kids discharged who we know we could have had a great impact on, we just couldn’t connect for one reason or another and that’s hard.”

Kids face learning challenges, too, because each day in Prep Academy requires two and a half hours of group therapy, cutting academic time almost in half. Ann Green, Prep Academy principal, also told me that it’s sometimes difficult to track academic progress because the kids only stay for about a year. This means there’s no year-by-year data to show that an individual child’s scores are improving in a specific area. Ann also told me that the short stay sometimes lends itself to challenges with relationship building. 

“Once you leave here, you don’t always know what happens. In a typical school setting, they leave your class and you watch them go through the rest of the building and grow, or you may see siblings and things like that. So sometimes you spend a lot of time building a relationship, but when it’s over, it’s really over.”

When I asked staff about challenges they faced, the person I really wanted to hear from was Ms. Debbie. She’d been there a long time, and we were friends, so I figured I’d get an honest answer. I talked with her and the ABS next door, Ms. Nakia, whose answer was short and sweet.

“I wish they would know what really goes on, before they just sign up.”

Ms. Debbie said something similar.

“I mean, this job is not for everybody. I’ve seen people come and stay one day and walk out. So the staff, when they come in here, I think it’s important that we’re telling them the truth about how a real day goes with these kids, and how many behaviors we really have here. A lot of people [are] shocked when they realize what they’re coming into. I mean honesty is key, they should be honest with them. This is not that easy. You have to have patience, a whole lot of patience actually, to work with these kids.”

If you’re thinking, “Yeah, okay. I could walk in and do this in a heartbeat,”  I get it. It’s hard to really understand what goes on at Saint Vincent without having been there. So, I started asking around: if you could tell the world one thing about Saint Vincent, about your job, or about the kids here, what would it be? The answers I got were insightful, even for me, after I had already been working there for a few months.

Some answers have been edited for brevity. 

“Ultimately, it’s just about the relationships . . . it’s why our kids will do well and it’s also why they will do poorly. They need to feel those relationships like you mentioned that stigma, a lot of our kids will say, “I was the worst kid at my old school” or “I was the troublemaker” . . . and the way [schools] talk about [kids] can sometimes sound negative. And I always try to explain to schools, you have the one kid in your class who needs the most support. Our classrooms are totally made up of those kids. We have 10 of those kids together in one classroom. Our kids come here, and they’re no longer viewed as the odd one man out, they’re just like everybody else, they just need support. So I think if, when you’re curious, when you take the time to build relationships, our kids just want the same thing everybody else wants.”

– Megan Obermeyer, Prep Academy Program Director

“One of our slogans is, We make good kids better. They’re not bad kids, they had bad situations brought upon them without them even having a choice in it, so just making, you know, seeing the good in every kid, every person, every adult, whatever, seeing the good in them and building from that. You know, not focusing on the negative. Yes, there’s always that negative piece in there but you gotta refocus. You know, everybody has good in them, I like to try to see the good in everybody, and not focus on the negative and then kinda go from there.”

– Brad Meyers, Prep Academy Program Director

“I really love my job . . . I love the people I work with. I truly believe in our vision and our mission, and I can see the differences that we’re making. Being a part of something that’s bigger than me, it’s really nice. You know, there are days that are hard, and there are days that are full of wins. But, I’ve never pulled into the parking lot, and said I don’t want to be here today. I’ve never had that feeling. Granted I still take my PTO and take care of myself and stuff, but I think just everyone’s understanding that mental health is so important and these children, we have to be there for these children because there isn’t anyone else who is.”

– Ann Green, Prep Academy Principal

“I’d say the majority of social workers are obviously not in it for the salary, so what’s their motivation for coming into the field? And that is genuinely to help either everyone that they can, or a specific population. Whatever they’re drawn to out of college. I have found that serving others has been the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done in my life, whether it’s children, families, my team, my supervisor, including myself. Just focusing, prioritizing my self care, taking care of myself. Serving others. I think that if other people had that mindset, I think that we would be a lot better off.”

– Joe Chupp, Care Coordination Manager

“I think I would say that there’s a reason Saint Vincent’s has been here for so long, and doing what they do so well, and it’s the same reason that I think they attract some really good quality people. This is the first residential program that I stepped into, every residential program can be improved, but this is the first one I stepped into that wasn’t a failing program.”

– Kris Denney, Residential Program Director

“I would say invest in the children around you, in your sphere of influence, because it really doesn’t take much for a child’s life to be completely derailed. You know, it takes just, sometimes it can just take one decision, not one, but one directive, one life changing decision from a caregiver. And the cliche that says it takes a village to raise a child, the support that we give the kids, whether it’s nephews, or just people, friends, friends’ kids, our own children, just invest in the kids around you, because those interactions, they really do go a long way.”

– Devin Fate, Residential Group Clinician

“It’s a great question, Ms. Sarah, because it’s such a loaded answer, but I’m gonna just speak from my heart . . . I think that Saint Vincent’s, especially in the summer, it provides safety, number one. This is a very, very safe environment. You have to have a key card to get in, you can’t just walk in these doors, even if you’re a parent picking up your child, there are sets of doors that you have to go through before you would even be exposed to a child . . . The second thing is that these kids get breakfast and lunch every day. Everybody’s financial situation, everybody’s parents might not be able to put hot food on the table. Here, you are guaranteed a hot meal. Every day. And I think just the last thing for me is that . . . everybody does something different to bring a different completeness to our children . . . the coping mechanisms, the groups, the group clinicians, we hope that all of that combined, we [can be] a place to kind of restructure your educational experience.“

– Ray Lynch, Adaptive Behavior Specialist

“Our kids are awesome, they are incredibly amazing. Our families are really invested. Some of our families are exhausted. They just are tired and they need a little bit of guidance and support or even just some validation, like, Yeah this is hard, and they want to do well. Honestly, they want to do well. The families want to do well, the kids want to do well. So, I think coming in with that mindset is really important and valuable, for all of us, to understand families do well when they can, the kids do well when they can.”

– Laurie Sparks-Dennison, Clinical Manager (Prep Academy)

“Perseverance. For everybody. The children, the staff, because everybody has their days where it’s rough, you don’t wanna come, you don’t wanna show up, you don’t wanna be your best, but as a staff, and as a role model, you gotta show that you can have a bad day and still do your best, even if it’s not 100%, you’re still doing your best.”

– Ivan Hill, Adaptive Behavior Specialist

“I would say to not believe the stigma of a nonprofit, of our name, Saint Vincent, of the work that we do. It can be really easy to think, nonprofit: you’re overworked and underpaid. And sometimes it can feel that way, depending on what work you’re doing. I know that. But, I don’t know, there are so many other things about working in this space that I think are valuable, and I think the nonprofit industry is hopefully moving more towards generously supporting their employees. People think we’re some Catholic, religious, stuffy organization when in actuality it’s one of the quirkiest places to work. Everyone is just unique and excels as individuals, so you wouldn’t think that I think just by hearing our name. And then people have a stigma just about the work that we do, and I feel like when you come here, and you see this space, and you see the kids and all of that, you say, oh, this isn’t an institution, these kids aren’t bad.”

– Sara Russell, Director of Community Engagement and Marketing

“We can do hard things, and we can all get stronger, if we have hope. And that’s what I feel every day when I walk in. We all do hard things every single day here. The kids do hard things. We have hope that it’s gonna get better.”

– Susan Lewis Kaylor, President & CEO

Susan said it best: we can do hard things. I got back to Ohio State on Saturday (luckily not in Morrison Tower again), and I’ve been telling people that my internship has been the most complex but enjoyable challenge I’ve tackled in a while. It required planning and communication ability, while simultaneously figuring the most effective ways to convince the staff they could trust me and that I (mostly) knew what I was doing, while also trying to understand the challenges the kids were facing, and how best I could relate to them. I learned that not everyone will like you at first, and that sometimes all it takes is a listening ear and some compassion for people to realize you’re on their side. I learned that just because you have a degree doesn’t mean you know more, and just because you come from different backgrounds doesn’t mean you can’t join forces to meet a common goal. I learned that kids are just people who need a little extra TLC, and that most adults are just people who are really kids at heart. Most importantly though, I grew a passion for the kids, and I learned that if you love them, they love you right back.