By Lucy
On Friday, December 21st our group went on our third field work. Even though we were missing one of our group members, we tried our best to get all we could out of this trip. So far this was one of our more successful fieldworks. Our goal was to learn more about foster care since that is the place most kids end up when the parents aren’t able to care for them anymore. We went to Good Shepherd Services on 27th street to meet with Nicole Boisvert and Denise Hinds. We asked them many questions about the foster care component in child abuse. They were very knowledgeable and I learned so much I had yet to learn. We learned that in order for the foster care agency to see what is best for the child, it is better to remove the child from their environment to evaluate what a good plan for them is. We also learned a lot about Good Shepherd services themselves. Good Shepherd tries to help as many kids as they can have a stable, safe home that they can live in for as long as they need. Denise told us that over 50% of the abuse that they have to deal with is sexual abuse. One of our questions we asked Denise was if she could tell us her definition of child abuse. She had a very interesting answer that kept me thinking throughout the whole interview. She said it was a situation where a child is hurt in any way whether physically or verbally and where the child may feel unsafe in the home. At the end of our interview Denise and Nicole gave us two videos. I think they would be very interesting and a great way to start off our teach-in with. In the end I really enjoyed this fieldwork and thought it was one of our bests. I am going to follow through with Denise and Nicole and try to set up some hands on work my group can do, maybe working with the children.
