CHECK Foster Care Clinic

Jenny Ross, Summer 2012

The CHECK pilot program started in January of 2012 as a clinic designated solely to evaluate and help children in foster care. There are 19,000 children in foster care in Ohio and 2,100 children in foster care in Hamilton County, many of whom have suffered child abuse and neglect. Within 5 days of placement, these children come for their state-mandated doctor’s visit. They are evaluated for abuse and neglect, checked for communicable diseases, and any needs of the foster parent are addressed. Within 30 days of their placement, the children come back for a comprehensive evaluation, including mental health, developmental status, vision/hearing screening, and any immunizations they need. The child is referred to services that can assist them, and a primary care physician is identified and established.

My project is to conduct qualitative interviews with foster parents. I use an open-ended and semi-structured questionnaire to guide my interviews. With qualitative interviews, I do not make any hypotheses prior to conducting interviews, but instead I look for patterns between the interviews. I analyze the interviews as they are conducted and generate themes to be compared between parents.

As part of my summer at CHECK, I shadowed in the clinic on Monday and Wednesday mornings. I was exposed to many of the difficulties and challenges that children in foster care and their families go through. My responsibilities included helping make reminder calls to the families, performing well-child checks and charting EPIC notes. I also attended many meetings to discuss difficult patient cases, literature reviews, and observed forensic interviews.

My experiences this summer allowed me to work with many influential people and exposed me to what they do on a day-to-day basis. I shadowed pediatricians, child abuse specialists, social workers, forensic interviewers and many more. Each person was very willing to answer questions and teach me about their role in the foster care system. I will leave this summer with an in-depth understanding of how essential of a role physicians play in this specific subspecialty of pediatrics. I hope to use the connections I have made to continue to help these children in the future.

I really enjoyed working at CHECK Foster Clinic this summer and I learned so much from my shadowing experiences and research. Interviewing the foster parents and teenagers allowed me to gain a better understanding of their everyday struggles. I learned how to listen to people and how to analyze their words to increase my understanding of what they are trying to tell me. I know that this experience will help me interact with patients in the future, and I feel blessed to have had such a wonderful summer.