Rebecca studied both Social Work and Nonprofit Administration and is currently a Senior Case Manager at Team IMPACT. She was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, went to college in Boston, and attended graduate school in Los Angeles. Rebecca has enjoyed seeing different parts of the country and still loves to travel as far and wide as she can. Rebecca is married with two young adult children and is as passionate about animals and activism as she is about her work.
We asked Rebecca about her role as a Case Manager and the clinical benefits she has seen children, families, and teams experience through Team IMPACT. Here’s what she had to say.
I was always the friend who would sit up with you all night and listen to your problems and hopefully have some good advice for you. I’ve always wanted to work in a job where I could go home every single day and know that I helped someone. I can do that as a social worker, and I can do that at Team IMPACT.
I’ve always been drawn to the idea that a community can get you through the tough times. Communities can be defined in many ways, and a team is one of those. Finding this incredible nonprofit where a team can become a community for a child who needs one has been amazing.
In my role as a Case Manager, I use my clinical skills every day. Sometimes I’m helping a parent to set therapeutic goals for their child’s experience in the program, or I’m helping a team think about how best to interact with a child who communicates without spoken language, or I’m thinking about what approach a coach might take to draw a socially isolated child out of their shell. In all of these situations, I use my clinical skills to help guide the family and team so both reap the most benefits possible from our program.
The benefits of Team IMPACT can be seen in three main areas. Because we are clinically based, we have referrers in medical settings who trust our program and therefore recommend us to their patients and families. The families benefit because they know that their case manager is someone with a degree in Child Life or Social Work and who is uniquely qualified to oversee their child’s match with an athletic team. And the teams benefit because they know that they can lean on the case managers for guidance about a child’s diagnosis, physical capabilities, or emotional struggles.
What’s special about Team IMPACT is that we get to facilitate an incredible relationship that develops between a child and a team. The kids we work with come from such diverse backgrounds. One day I’ll work with the family of a child with cerebral palsy and the next I’ll work with a family of a child with a disease so rare that fewer than 100 people in the world have it. Our kids range in age from five to 18 so each day is new and different. The college student-athletes who we work with are amazing — compassionate, friendly, creative, and playful. In some cases, the athletes themselves aren’t that much older than the children they get matched with, so they don’t hesitate to get silly and drop to the floor to play Legos or start up a water balloon fight. They really bond with these kids and become incredible role models for them.