New York, New Life, New Alternatives for Children

I started at New Alternatives for Children (NAC for short!) on June 6, as a Bilingual Case Associate. At this child welfare agency, I assist the Social Workers with their case loads. Each Social Worker has 10 or more families to juggle. And when part of the job description requires traveling daily to any of New York's five boroughs to visit clients (e.g. Home Visits) or going to court (e.g. for Permanency Hearings), a little extra help comes in handy!

For those who are not familiar with the agency, NAC reaches out to medically fragile children. Medically fragile refers to all kinds of medical conditions, ranging from HIV to cerebral palsy. NAC works to return these medically fragile children to the birth parents, place them in foster care, or have them adopted.

NAC is a unique child welfare agency because it provides medical and mental health services right at the agency. There are several health professionals on staff at the office, including a pediatrician, nurses, psychiatrists, licensed psychologists, etc.

Part of what makes my job so interesting to me is the intersection between medicine and psychology. Before I work with a client, my supervisor provides me with several notes documenting the client's case, psychiatric evaluations, etc. The clients who come to NAC challenge me to learn about and deal with many different kinds of people.

If I'm not learning about a disease previously unknown to me (like MoyaMoya - constriction of blood arteries in the brain), or about a client's past history of mental illness, I might be grappling with cultural issues (like machismo). "There's never a dull day at NAC," my co-worker remarked to me on my first day.

Never a dull day indeed.