Name: Fred

Social Justice Group: Child Welfare, Foster Care and Adoption

Date of Fieldwork: February 9, 2022

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Alessandra brunialti and Paul yager

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 February 9th, 2022 we met with a second pair of parents, Alessandra Brunialti and Paul Yager. These people were important to meet with because they fostered and adopted a classmate of mine and her brother. We met with them to talk about their story and their story was amazing. We learned that it took a very long time to get their children.

We learned how they first became foster parents and adopted through foster care.  To foster, first you have to complete a training for 9 months to get certified as a foster parent. Then, the foster agency can call you when they have a child that needs to get placed — we learned that it might be in the middle of the night or really early in the morning, due to the needs of the child.  Then at that point a child might get placed into your care and you have to take that child in and care them.  The Agency’s main goal is to reunite families and their biological children over placing the child in foster care, but if the Agency can’t, the child might be placed in an adoption agency or stay in foster care.