Brandi DiDino – Committed to Bettering the Lives of R.I.’s Children

Brandi DiDino is a 2017 RIC alumna and a social caseworker II in the Family Service Unit of the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families. There, her work is focused on emergency situations and crisis interventions involving families and children. And all of the clients on her caseloads are involved in some way with Family Court. 

Along with dedicating one day a week to court appearances and another to paperwork, phone calls and assisting co-workers with emergencies at the office, DiDino’s job involves making regular home visits, be it family homes, foster homes or group homes. Yet to speak of what she does as a “job” gives her pause.

“I’ve been a public child welfare worker for 12 years now. A line of work that, according to the national average, has only a two-to-five-year longevity rate. But I’ve never thought of it as a job,” she said. “I think of it as my mission in life. It’s what keeps me going.” 

Four years ago she enrolled at RIC to build on her skills.

RIC’s School of Social Work educates and trains many of the practicing master’s-level social workers in Rhode Island, including numerous leaders of nonprofit and government agencies. The college is also the only higher education institution in the state to offer a graduate program in social work.

Already equipped with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Providence College, DiDino enrolled in both the M.S.W. program and the C.G.S. in childhood and adolescent trauma program at Rhode Island College in 2014. 

The C.G.S. is open to all second-year M.S.W. students as well as to those who have earned the M.S.W. or M.A. in counseling degrees. Through the C.G.S. program, DiDino learned trauma-informed, evidence-based practice with children and adolescents. She increased her understanding of the nature of a traumatic experience from a child’s perspective and explored the ways in which trauma impacts the entire family. 

DiDino said she felt revitalized and returned to work disseminating what she had learned about trauma among her co-workers.

“I now understand the impact of trauma,” she said. “I now understand that I could be as well-meaning as possible, yet my role as a social caseworker in a child’s life is still traumatizing for that child.”

DiDino currently has 16 families on her caseload and a total of 25 children. During her home visits, as she has always done, DiDino converses with the child about how things are going. Only now she comes in with a deeper awareness of their trauma. She said, “I ask myself, ‘What can I do to make this situation less traumatizing for them?’”

The end goal, she said, is to equip children so that they, and their offspring, will inherit a better future.

“We witness this cycle where we work with a family, close the case and then, after a number of years, we’re opening the case to the same families again, only this time it is the children who are now parents on our caseloads,” she said.

DiDino recalled a youth she had worked with for six or seven years who would phone her multiple times each day, as DiDino was the primary adult in the adolescent’s life. Today, her former client has successfully enrolled in college with aspirations to become a social worker so that she can have the same impact on others that DiDino had on her. 

DiDino said, “It is extremely rewarding to know that I helped stop the cycle, to know that my former client is a successful young adult now, to know that she has goals, hopes and dreams and the tools to achieve them, to know that she has confidence in her ability to ensure her own safety and well-being.”

She recalled how a RIC professor once told her, “Social workers are witnesses to human suffering. This is what we do on a daily basis.” But DiDino is far from war-weary. 

“I love my job more so today than when I started,” she said. “I can’t sing enough praises for my RIC professors and the dedication and attention they give to their students. Two of my co-workers are already asking how they can apply to the M.S.W. and C.G.S. programs.”​​

For more information on ​RIC’s School of Social Work, contact the Director of Admissions Paula Coutinho at (401) 456-9830 or pcoutinho@ric.edu.​​​