Targeted Recruitment
Targeted recruitment considers the unique needs of the children and youth in need of foster and adoptive families and develops recruitment strategies and messages based on their needs (i.e. race, age, location, culture, medical/mental health needs). Effective targeted recruitment uses demographic data to inform its understanding of recruiting for the specific needs of children and youth in care as well as identifying shared characteristics of current foster and adoptive parents. Examples of targeted recruitment include community and faith-based initiatives, incentive programs for foster and adoptive families to recruit others from their communities and posters and flyers at places that targeted prospective foster and adoptive families may frequent. Find out more about:
Resources and Reports
- Practitioner's Guide: Getting More Parents for Children from Your Recruitment Efforts (2.7 MB PDF): This guide summarizes promising practices in keeping families involved from their first contact with the Agency until a foster child is placed with them and points you to web pages and other sources of practice wisdom, so you can keep up to date on emerging thinking on the subject of recruitment to placement.
- Working with African American Adoptive, Foster and Kinship Families (3.6 MB PDF): This guide assists public and private child welfare staff in their work with prospective and current African American foster, adoptive and kinship families. It provides tips for becoming more culturally competent and being able to partner more effectively with African American families.
- Nuestra Familia, Nuestra Cultura (Our Family, Our Culture): Promoting & Supporting Latino Families in Adoption and Foster Care (1.7 MB PDF): This guide offers workers in the child welfare field specific tips and techniques for overcoming challenges and increasing effectiveness in working with potential foster or adoptive parents of Latino heritage. It draws heavily upon the experiences and suggestions of Latino foster and adoptive parents, Latino youth who are in foster care or who have been adopted, and bicultural, bilingual child welfare professionals.
- Dollars and Sense: A Guide to Achieving Adoptions Through Public-Private Contracting (762 KB PDF): This guide provides public and private agency program managers, supervisors and contract managers with information that can help make the purchase of interjurisdictional adoption services truly work. It also serves as a starting point on purchase of service for States and Counties and the private agencies with which they work.
- Wherever My Family Is, That's Home! Adoption Services for Military Families (1.5 MB PDF): This guide provides a roadmap to help caseworkers make quality and timely adoption services readily available for military families and focuses on what adoption agencies and military personnel can do to prepare and help military families on their journey to adopt children, including their relatives’ children, from foster care.
- Finding a Fit that Will Last a Lifetime: A Guide to Connecting Adoptive Families with Waiting Children (374 KB PDF): This guide helps you build your skills and become a matching artist. It focuses on best practices in matching waiting children in foster care with adoptive families by capturing what families, youth, caseworkers and researchers have learned to be the most effective ways of bringing waiting children and families together.
- Family Pocket Guide: This guide is designed for prospective parents to help them understand and follow their individual journey throughout the process. English (1.2 MB PDF) and Spanish (1.3 MB PDF) versions are available.
- Recruiting, Preparing, and Supporting Successful Adoptive Families – A Step-by Step Recruitment Guide to Educate and Empower Agencies for Recruiting Adoptive Families in Rural Communities (7.5 MB PDF): Northeast Ohio Adoption Services has made available the final report of its completed Rural Targeted Community Outreach Federal Adoption Opportunities Grant. The project generated more than 1,800 adoption inquiries and resulted in 64 adoptive placements. The report contains detailed information on the targeted and social marketing methods used by the project as well as its child specific and local recruitment activities. Many full-color samples of the marketing and recruitment materials developed by the project are included. Source: March 2010 issue of E-Notes
Online Resources
For additional resources on recruitment and retention of foster, adoptive and kinship parents, see our publications for professionals or find out more about targeted recruitment.