Demands upon the Mind for Work: Fostering Agency Within an Organization

Admitting and Admissions

WESTCOAST CHILDREN'S CLINIC (WCC) WORKS WITH FOSTER children and the poor—the so-called inner city or urban population. We work with children and their families and extended systems in the traditional setting of an outpatient clinic and in the community in foster homes, group homes, schools, and other nontraditional therapy environs. In its 28 years, WCC evolved from primarily a psychology training site where the bulk of clinic-based services, psychotherapy, and assessment were delivered by interns (and by proxy, their supervisors) to a community psychology agency. The so-called culture of the clinic resembled a quasi-family bonded by volunteerism. Beginning in mid-2002, steps began to define both the business and service orientation of the clinic into a

professional organization staffed by experienced clinicians, early career psychologists, as well as interns. In 2003, the agency formalized its commitment to working primarily with foster youth and the disadvantaged by entering into a contract with Alameda County social services and behavioral health care. Often heard around the time of the new funding was, “We're finally going to get paid for what we've already done.” Unfortunately we were not going to be paid for what we'd already done; the question centered on what we were to do and what price we were going to pay.

Working intimately within the foster care system brings one face to face with horror. The circumstances of induction into foster care, the personal and impersonal legacies preceding the child, the effect of trauma, and the infinite permutations that take shape in the person of a child forces one t