Targeted Recruitment

EFFECTIVE TARGETED RECRUITMENT EFFORTSTHE CHILDREN’S BUREAU FUNDS (ADOPT US KIDS),

PART OF A NETWORK OF NATIONAL RESOURCE CENTERS ESTABLISHED BY THE CHILDREN’S BUREAU.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION. © 2002-2015 ADOPTION EXCHANGE ASSOCIATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Target Prospective Foster Parents to Match Their Strengths and Skills

With the Specific Needs of Children Entering Foster Care

Seek prospective foster parents that have the skills and willingness to accept the children coming into care. (Some may be more skilled with very young children, and others best with teens and young adults).

Fully understand the needs, lifestyles, demographics and profiles of the prospective caregivers.

Pay attention to needs of children and youth. Those needs include: placement in their own neighborhoods, in the same location as their home school, in proximity to their parents/siblings and other alternative caregivers.

Engaging the Business Community

Example: “Kentucky’s Project MATCH (Making Appropriate and Timely Connections for Children)* Used targeted recruitment to drive efforts and messages aimed at populations that are most likely to be strong possibilities to become foster and adoptive parents for the children and youth in need of placement.

Example: Town with Children, staff identified a restaurant where adults from that market segment are likely to eat. Project MATCH partnered with that restaurant to allow their servers to wear T-shirts promoting project MATCH and a phone number on the sign outside the restaurant, distributed brochures about foster care and generously offered a 10 percent discount to foster parents and foster care workers that came to the restaurant to eat.

*National Resource Center, Children’s Bureau. Adoption Exchange Association. All Rights Reserved. © 2002-2015

Engaging the Business Community continued…

Develop targeted and data driven recruitment strategies, use the same data to plan for family retention, preparation and support activities

Example: If you are recruiting families for teens, have information and resources to share with prospective families about how to meet the needs of teens in foster care.

National Resource Center, Children’s Bureau. Adoption Exchange Association. All Rights Reserved. © 2002-2015

Effective targeted recruitment efforts:

Are data driven. Agencies research and build their recruitment strategies based on demographic characteristics, values, and behaviors to better identify potential successful families.

Are culturally competent. Agencies continuously develop skills in working effectively with the various social, racial and ethnic groups who reflect the diversity of children and youth in care.

Use the right messages and media. Agencies’ messages appeal to the targeted parents’ values and are placed where parents are likely to respond.

Are designed to focus on supporting and retaining foster and adoptive parents at every stage of the process.

Find families who are similar to your most successful foster , adoptive and relative placements.

Use community-based methods. Agencies reach out to, and build meaningful relationships with the communities they serve. They deliver services in ways that are most accessible and appropriate for each community.

Partner with faith-based organizations interested in helping recruit foster and adoptive families from their faith community.

Develop community-based recruitment teams specific to a geographic region to build pools of resource families who reflect the racial and ethnic characteristics of the children and youth in your agency’s care.

Who are the families you should be targeting? What are the best ways to reach these families? Where can you find these families?

National Resource Center, Children’s Bureau. Adoption Exchange Association. All Rights Reserved. © 2002-2015