Stanford University Urban Studies &
Urban Summer Fellowship
Student perspectives of community-engaged learning and research across the United States
Hello again! This is Kimberly, and this summer I worked at the Alliance for Children’s Rights in the Healthy Teen Families Program of the healthcare department. The week before last week was my last at the Alliance, so I decided to take some time to gather all of my thoughts and reflect on my last 10 weeks at the Alliance, how I have changed and what I have learned.
When crafting my learning plan at the end of spring quarter, I was not sure what to expect of at the Alliance, so I outlined some general goals regarding learning more about the work that happens behind the scenes at nonprofits like the Alliance. I wanted to learn more about the internal dynamics at the Alliance, and I wanted to see where the balance between internal interaction and interaction with clients lies within an organization that constantly has to fight the system of child welfare yet also cooperate with it. In general, I wanted to learn more about the fields of law and social work in the way that operate in public service and at a private organization, and I definitely wanted to learn more about the child welfare system and become more actively conscious of it and the role it plays especially since I had not had any experiences with foster care. Admittedly, I grew up not being aware of the child welfare system because, to my knowledge, I was not surrounded by anyone directly or indirectly connected to the system. My overall experience at the Alliance this summer felt more like a learning experience than work experience, and the timing of it felt so perfect for me. This coming year is one where I feel like I will have to make a lot of decisions for myself and my future, including what to major in, and I feel very lucky that my summer at the Alliance let me experience a lot different fields at the same time. Because I was one of the few undergrad interns, the work that I did was not as law-oriented as the rest of the law students; this let me work in several different programs at the Alliance and expand the duties I was responsible for. I was able to work in different programs in the healthcare department, attending Alliance-wide policy meetings, and even briefly work with the adoption department to facilitate a summer Adoption Day (plus, sometimes I did typical intern stuff like making copies and filing). Working directly with attorneys and social workers, both within the organization and outside of it with other organizations and clients, is what really allowed me to explore the different facets of the Alliance as well as get a deeper understanding of what goes on at the Alliance and how the Alliance collaborates with the community and other organizations in order to improve its services. I was able to meet others at other organizations like Public Counsel, another nonprofit in the area, as well work with the Department of Children and Family Services at PPT meetings with pregnant youth in order to make sure they are getting the services and resources they need. I think the one event that really represents my time as a whole at the Alliance was Adoption Day. Even though I did not get the opportunity to personally work an adoption case with an attorney, I was able to play a role in the summer Adoption Day. Adoption Day is a day where the Children’s Court only holds adoption hearings and hundreds of adoptions are finalized. This was a day where I got to see it all in action; attorneys attending hearings, social workers and interns meeting with the clients of the cases they worked on. Some of the adoptions that were finalized were years in the making; a family I help with translations mentioned to me that their adoption of two girls took almost 3 years after several complications with paperwork. This day in particular allowed me to see a lot of intersectionality in the field of social work and law; I got to see the how different facets of foster care intersected in adoption. A lot of the families that finalized their adoptions on Adoption Day were families that worked with more than one department at the Alliance, dealing with issues regarding housing, poverty, immigration, and other obstacles. I’ve mentioned this before, but this summer at the Alliance has really taught me the value of small steps, of valuing and paying attention to the pace of progress, even if it is slow. The Alliance made a lot of strides in specific client cases, state policy, and especially in its transition period as a new CEO comes in. The Alliance has also gained a lot of press coverage this summer, with California-based newspapers putting out several articles relating to foster care in the state and in the county of Los Angeles; several attorneys from the Alliance worked closely with reporters to provide information. In watching how much progress the Alliance made in the short 10 weeks I was there, I learned to see progress in my own self and how I have grown this summer as well. Personally, I’ve made a lot of progress in learning how to better take care of myself and treat myself more kindly; this may seem irrelevant to my work at the Alliance, but I noticed that in working with families that were in difficult situations, the empathy I expressed with them also translated into more active empathy towards myself and those around me. Overall, it was very eye-opening to see how my experiences at the Alliance translated similar values, though applied differently in my own life, something I did not expect to see. Now that I am ready to head back to campus, I take with me these experiences and these values, keeping in mind what I have learned, the privileges I have compared to others, and the ways that I can become more informed and more involved. Thanks for reading! Kimberly
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AuthorThis blog is authored by Stanford University students engaged in summer fellowships through the Cardinal Quarter and the Program on Urban Studies. All writings and thoughts belong to the Fellows and do not represent the opinion of the sponsoring programs. Archives
September 2018
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