One of the most challenging aspects that we have faced on our journey with Arms Wide has been the potential scope of the problem. When we were initially presented with the foster care adoption process at Arms Wide, we were torn between focusing on recruitment of families or on retainment of families. However, as we got into our research, we learned that Arms Wide had recently rebranded. This rebranding had improved recruitment strategies but retainment numbers were still low. Therefore we decided to work with Arms Wide to devise a solution to increase retainment of families throughout the foster-care adoption process. Once we decided on a problem space, we created a survey to gather primary source data during the information sessions held by Arms Wide. We sent out our survey and that was when we encountered our next big obstacle; we only received one response to our survey. We decided to visit the next session in order to gather data by talking with the families.

That leads us to our most rewarding part of the journey so far! It was very fun talking to the families that attended the information session. They were very interesting people who had a lot to share; they were determined on going through with foster care adoption and were very invested in the presentation on the process. We learned a lot from them and were sad that the conversation had to end. We were also very thankful that the couples listened to our reasons for being there and that they took the time to chat with us.