Our story

We started in 1976 with a couple of projects, including federally funded resource centers that provided training and support on child welfare topics. That work inspired our original name, Northwest Resource Associates.

Over time, we became a trusted partner to state child welfare agencies across the Northwest and a founding partner in the national AdoptUSKids collaboration. As our work grew, so did our expertise in foster care and in supporting permanency—adoption, kinship care, guardianship—for young people who can’t be reunified with their family of origin.

We have earned a reputation for bringing creative, forward-thinking solutions to child welfare and for being a trusted partner organizations can count on.

In 2026, we became Alongside to better represent who we are and how we work: alongside young people in foster care, the child welfare professionals working tirelessly on their behalf, and the families who step forward to offer lifelong connection.

We’ve seen a lot of change

Over the decades, we’ve seen a lot of change:

• The recognition that reunification can be the first, best option, even for families under strain.
• A more sophisticated understanding that adoption is a loss as well as a gain for every child.
• Slow but discernible progress toward ensuring young people make lasting connections where they can feel at home.

We’ve driven a lot of change

Since our founding, we’ve centered the needs and voices of young people experiencing foster care and advanced improvements in child welfare.

• We were among the first organizations to use technology to recruit families and introduce them to youth who need permanency.
• Years later, working in partnerships nationally and in the Northwest, we transformed youth profiles, giving young people the chance to tell their own stories.
• In Alaska, we pioneered virtual education for potential foster and adoptive parents, years before COVID. Our flexible programs reached families who live in remote areas—and put us in a strong position to respond when the pandemic hit.
• We helped Washington combine customer research and design thinking to reveal and clear some of the thorniest paths prospective parents encounter in their journey to become adoptive parents.
• In Oregon, our workforce training programs established new ways to support adoptive families—by imparting adoption competency skills to the therapists and child welfare professionals who serve them.

We are fiercely optimistic

Today our staff experts in social work, technology, and communication continue to take on the biggest problems and opportunities. We help potential parents see youth for their strengths, amplify the voices of young people in care, and explore how emerging technology can support deeper, more meaningful conversations between youth, families, and child welfare professionals.

Some believe that child welfare systems will never work, that the challenges and complexity are simply too great. At Alongside, we’re optimistic about the solutions we can create when we work together.

We’ll keep pushing until child welfare systems work for those they are meant to serve—and until every young person has the family they need to thrive.