Name: Elodie Harris

Social Justice Group: Child Welfare, Foster Care and Adoption

Date of Fieldwork: February 7, 2022

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):New Alternatives for Children (NAC) Staff: Arlene Goldsmith, Bobbi Nathanson, Carola Haberly, Carla Riccobono, and Paris Robins

Type of Fieldwork: Interview

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?[:: :

On Monday, February 7th, 2022, our Social Justice group was honored to meet with staff at New Alternatives for Children (NAC). We interviewed Arlene Goldsmith (Executive Director), Bobbi Nathanson (Director of Volunteers, Student Internships, & Community Relations), Carola Haberly (Senior Director of Prevention Services), Carla Riccobono (Senior Director of Foster Care & Adoption Services), and Paris Robins (Foster Parent Recruitment Supervisor). NAC is an incredible organization that helps children who are in foster care, supports foster children with special needs, trains foster parents to become good caretakers for their children, helps children when going through the adoption process, helps to reunite families who have been spilt apart, and overall, helps all children find safe and loving homes. NAC continues to have a positive impact on many foster kids’ lives. NAC’s primary goal is unification, reuniting all foster kids with their biological families.

The NAC staff had many interesting things to say. Arlene has worked at NAC for 40 years and started the organization in 1981, when she saw that children were growing up in hospitals because they had special needs that their parents weren’t addressing. She thought that this was wrong so she started NAC as a way to help all foster children experience a great childhood despite their past traumas. One thing that Arlene said that really stuck out to us was, “a child’s history does not define their destiny.” This statement means that even though many children go through hardships as they are involved in the foster care system, nothing prevents them from reaching the goal of finding a permanent, safe home.

The other staff: Bobbi, Carola, Carla, and Paris, gave insight about how the foster care system works, how children’s special needs are addressed at NAC, and the complicated process of finding all children homes. They explained that NAC has many separate clinics and activities that help foster children to experience the best childhood possible.

All of this information helped us to reflect on our own childhoods and understand how much we take for granted as kids who are lucky enough to attend school and live in safe home environments with parents and siblings. We loved hearing from NAC and they have inspired us to organize our own school drive collecting school supplies for foster children. This was a wonderful interview!