Ava Fevrier, MSW ’14, emerged from the Master of Social Work program at Adelphi University’s Manhattan Center with far more than a degree.
Ava Fevrier, MSW ’14, emerged from the Master of Social Work program at Adelphi University’s Manhattan Center with far more than a degree. She found her voice as an advocate.
Upon graduation, she secured a position as a social worker at Mount Sinai Hospital and tackled it with confidence. As a home social worker, she works with medically at-risk patients to connect them with needed medical care. Fevrier said her responsibilities include advocating for patients to service providers, helping patients decipher medical jargon in order to follow up with care properly and coordinating transportation for patients.
“I find that everything I learned at Adelphi is useful to the work I do now, especially thinking and talking clinically,” she said. Fevrier worked for seven years at King’s County Hospital, but admits that working as a case manager, she was unable to develop the skills she needed to advance her career, which is where her professors came in. “My coursework has prepared me with having the confidence to make clinical decisions,” she said.
Adelphi did more than equip her with technical skills and knowledge; it helped her understand how much advocating for others meant to her. She became involved in the Adelphi Manhattan Center School of Social Work Social Action Group, giving testimony at New York City Hall on behalf of the homeless. She was moved by the large number of people who were also giving testimony there. “My heart became swollen with the need to help combat this injustice,” she wrote in the essay that would win her the Adelphi School of Social Work Dean’s Scholarship Award. “I wanted my voice to be part of this need for social change.”
Working at Mount Sinai, she now has the opportunity to advocate for the underprivileged and to help ensure that they are treated with care. “I trust that I am capable of using my clinical skills to assist patients in the setting that I work,” she said.
Looking ahead, Fevrier said she aspires to hold an administrative position in which she can have a say in program design and evaluation. “Anywhere that I can lend my voice and it will be respected will give me happiness,” she said.