Allan Appel Photo
State child-welfare authorities took away Nadine Diaz’s twins Molli and Joel six weeks after they were born. She had been using drugs and had severe post-partem depression; it was hard to stay on a path to recovery with little support at home.
That’s when she turned to ‘r kids Family Center, a small adoption and reconnection agency that does huge things in the lives of struggling families. Diaz got her kids back in April.
Monday afternoon Diaz and other families celebrated the organization’s tenth year with a block party outside ‘r kids’ home at 45 Dixwell Ave. The party featured popcorn, ices, hugs, music, and stories about treating people even in the most dire straits with respect and dignity.
Diaz, Sadaat, and Molli.
The agency has nine employees, including caseworker like Anushka Sadaat, who is nothing short of a superhero to Diaz. In negotiating recovery, taking classes, and visitation rights with the state Department of Children and Families, Diaz found the interchanges were difficult, hard to understand, and at times punitive Sadaat’s role was to mediate, advocate, and communicate with DCF on behalf of Diaz and her other clients.
“It’s up to the parent to show the desire to reconnect. When you have people who can relate to you and not judge you and understand your situation,” then progress can be made, “Diaz said. “Anushka treats me more like a family member.”
“Nadine is an example of hard work. She’s a single mom who’s done a wonderful job with her kids despite all the stresses — crime, issues with housing. We give them hope. Everyone makes mistakes in their lives. We grow. We move on,” Sadaat said while Danny Nunez, another of Diaz’s kids ran off to try to find a raspberry, not a watermelon ice.
The agency’s head of mentoring, Steve Ingram, and Welch-Rubin.
Diaz works as a certified nursing assistant now and hopes to start community college in the fall. She lives in Farnam Court, the troubled housing complex at Grand and Franklin.
“Housing is a big need. For someone who’s in recovering going back to that place is not ideal. No,” said Sadaat.
Lori Welch-Rubin (pictured) is a lawyer and ‘r kids Family Center board member. She said what distinguishes this agency from others is the dignity and hope with which the workers interact with clients. “Even when the best a parent can do is relinquish the rights to the kids, staff does it so the parent nevertheless feels valuable doing the best thing [under the circumstances] for the child. You don’t feel judged,” she said.
Following an eight-month separation, single dad Michael Jones was reunited with his daughter Mikela after he worked through anger management and other problems. “I had to learn how to talk to her, how to deal with my feelings,” he said.
Jones and daughter with U.S. Rep. DeLauro, Alderman Sergio Rodriguez, and his wife, Rubin-Rodriguez.
He said being able to talk to ‘r kids Family’s Ingram around the clock, six and even seven days a week, was indispensable to his reconnecting to his daughter.
Jones is now part of Ingram’s group of fathers who now go, on a paid basis, to counsel DCF staffers on issues like what it feels like when, as Jones put it, “DCF barges into your home.”
Executive Director Randi Rubin-Rodriguez said that come December her agency faces an approximate $109,000 cut, or about a third of the total in its primary program, which involves reconnecting families.
She’s worried. She said her staff is looking for new fundraising, collaborations, and other ways for the services to continue.
Her agency knows how to deal with adversity.