Necessary Components of Effective Foster Care and Adoption Recruitment

Necessary Components of Effective Foster Care and Adoption Recruitment

Recruitment of families to care for children and youth is a complex process. It involves the assessment of a variety of factors to inform agency planning and the construction of an effective recruitment strategy. Preliminary planning of external and internal factors must be addressed in order to reach interested families and actually place children with foster and adoptive parents.

External Factors

The agency must be aware of its reputation in the communities that it serves and from which parents will be recruited. If the perception of the agency is a negative one, people in the community will not respond to recruitment efforts. Regardless of agency auspice, the agency is a part of the child welfare system, and might not have a good reputation in many communities. The television and press have often presented a one-sided view of foster care and child welfare -- only reporting failures and not successes.

Media coverage about a child who was abused because the system did not respond as expected, or presenting child welfare workers as only removing children from their families does not lead to positive perceptions. Consequently, perceptions will have to be addressed in designing recruitment programs. Strategies involving public relations and building community relationships will be described later in this paper.

Internal Factors

The agency must identify resources needed for recruitment effort. These resources include the agency's philosophical and policies, and staff resources. An agency's policies and procedures, and general philosophical approach to services will have a tremendous impact on the effectiveness of recruitment. An agency that views families as resources who are empowered throughout the intake and preparation process and prepares and supports families to parent children who have been abused or neglected will get a different result than one that begins screening families out from the initial contact and takes an investigatory approach to assessment and preparation. Agencies serving children of color must determine whether their policies, procedures and practices are culturally competent. Accessibility of offices and services to families in targeted communities and staff who are competent to serve the population are important to recruiting and retaining families in the foster care and adoption process. Using staff members who are from the community may enhance this accessibility. Empowerment, competency and accessibility are important from the time of initial contact and throughout the process that results in foster care placement and finalization of adoption.

Also important are the agency's staff resources. The agency must have a commitment to staff training to ensure that staff have appropriate knowledge and skills needed for recruitment. This includes an understanding and commitment to the agency's philosophy about bringing families into the process, rather than screening them out. An assessment of external and internal factors is an ongoing process. After an initial organizational assessment is done, and revisions implemented, planning for recruitment can begin.

Recruitment Planning

Organizations must clearly identify the children who need care, are in care, and awaiting foster care or adoptive placements. This is important because recruitment efforts must accurately depict the children who need foster or adoptive families. This information on children should include age, gender, race, ethnicity, health status and history. educational level, special challenges and capabilities, and other relevant descriptors. The population of children coming into child welfare placements has changed in recent years. Children coming into care need many more services and skilled foster parents and adoptive parents. These parents may have to assist children who have experienced sexual abuse, serious child abuse and neglect, or been affected by their parents' substance abuse. A recruitment effort is designed to increase general interest in foster parenting and adoption, and create interest in and support for caring for the specific children served by the agency.

One general strategy is a public information initiative. This public information component serves to inform the community of the general need for foster parents and adoptive parents as well as bringing specific children and types of children to the public's attention. A public information strategy might include:

Creating recruitment brochures, posters or booklets for display in community settings such as churches, day care centers, barber shops and beauty shops, medical care facilities, and grocery stores.

The construction of these materials may be challenging as an agency attempts to introduce itself, and its services, describe children in need, and describe foster parenting and adoption in an attractive manner that also catches one's attention and communicates accurate information. Graphics, pictures, and wording need to be carefully selected to provide a culturally accurate and inviting message, using the language of the prospective parents.
Developing a media campaign using large posters, billboards, radio spots or television to introduce the need for caregivers and the agency. Such initiatives often require a partnership between the agency staff, who understand the nature of the children in care and the requirements for foster and adoptive parenting, and public information specialists within the agency and marketing and advertising professionals outside the agency. This partnership might be expanded to include community representatives to increase the probability of a message that is properly targeted to the community. It may be possible to find advertising professionals who will work pro bono or at reduced cost for this family and child-centered campaign.
Exploring opportunities to present the agency's recruitment needs to an audience through community-oriented programming. This would include having staff appear on local media shows to discuss their work. For example, cable television that targets local communities where the demographics meet the needs of the child welfare population is a good recruitment tool, as are local newspapers that target specific communities. Community level programming may be provided free of charge or at reasonable rates. It may also include participating in community fairs, and other events that allow a booth or display or the distribution of materials for social and charitable purposes.

A public service campaign will accomplish two purposes. First, it identifies a number of persons who are willing to take the next steps to find out about foster care and adoption. Some agencies have found that such campaigns generate a high volume of inquiries but a smaller number of more serious persons. But these are still persons recruited who might not have been identified through other means. The second purpose of public information is to provide a positive picture of foster care and adoption, and of child welfare in general. The negative perceptions, noted as external factors hindering recruitment, can be counterbalanced by positive images and human interest success stories provided by agency representatives through the media, community forums, and popular publications.

In addition to general strategies for recruitment, there can be initiatives that feature specific children in need of homes and parents.

For example, New York's Family Album is a booklet that features pictures and brief descriptions of children in need of adoptive families. It is a high quality piece done with much color that portrays the children in a positive way and demonstrates respect for the cultures of the children and a commitment to finding families for them. Such material can be useful when addressing groups that may help let others know about adoption, as well as to groups of people who have expressed an interest in adoption.

Such tools can increase public awareness as well as serve to focus on the needs of actual children waiting to be adopted. Organizations have found that in addition to the public information approach they need to simultaneously use child specific approaches for recruitment. These approaches serve to highlight actual children that personally engage interested families. "Waiting Children" newspaper, television and radio features continue to be effective. Some organizations have also begun to explore paid advertising on radio and television. Free public service announcements may serve a public information purpose, but organizations cannot control when they are played. Consequently, they may not reach the desired audience. Paid advertising allows for selection of particular time slots. Radio advertising can often be purchased at a relatively modest rate.

Another specific child adoption recruitment approach involves a variety of ways that interested families can actually meet children waiting to be adopted. Many agencies or organizations now sponsor adoption parties, picnics or other social events where the children can havefun and interested families can meet children in need of adoptive families. Staff are available to provide materials, answer questions that families may have, and support the children. Such gatherings can give prospective adoptive parents a much better understanding of who these "waiting children" are than does a picture and a written description.

Child specific strategies are more difficult to implement in foster care. It is often not possible to identify specific children before placement is needed and there are confidentiality requirements that might limit an agency's ability to showcase a child in foster care or in need of a foster home. It is possible to discuss types of children in need of care, for example newborns and infants in hospitals whose mothers may have used crack or other substances that placed the child at risk ("boarder babies"). The ability to gain an accurate picture of children in need of foster care and to begin to consider oneself as a child's caregiver may be enhanced by actively involving veteran foster parents and introducing them to prospective foster parents.

This would allow prospective parents to meet foster parents who could share some of their experiences and to meet children who might be similar to children they might be asked to foster. Another approach for recruitment may be called a community approach. If the organization has been actively engaged with targeted communities, it may collaborate with community leaders, institutions, and organizations to help "spread the word" about children needing foster and adoptive families. This may be done by simply leaving written material with interested individuals and organizations. Formal partnerships can be developed such as that between agencies and African American churches such as in the One Church, One Child programs throughout the nation or Spaulding for Children's Bandele project in which adoption recruitment and parent preparation classes are presented in each of the African American churches participating in the project. Other states and organizations have collaborated with organizations such as the Urban League, local arms of the National Association of Black Social Workers, various labor unions, and fraternal and social organizations with high community visibility and respect.

One final form of recruitment that is one of the most effective is word of mouth. Prospective and present foster parents and adoptive parents can be key to recruitment. Word of mouth is a powerful tool as a prospective foster or adoptive parent may or may not respond to recruitment efforts depending on what they hear from others who have had this contact with the agency. This underscores the importance of an internal agency assessment. Agency policies, procedures, and ways of engaging inquiring families and veteran families set the tone for this natural means of recruitment. The internal organization must be consumer friendly. For the Executive Director to line staff, the agency must be foster parent and adoptive parent friendly. Parents need to be rewarded, respected, and most of all, their opinions need to be heard and valued. A family that has been pleased with the service it received from an agency will let others know this. Many potential resource families contact an agency because their friend, neighbor, or a relative is a foster parent with or adopted through that agency.

Some agencies have formalized this natural recruitment method by involving foster and adoptive parents in their recruitment programs. This involvement includes assisting potential resource families in complex agency applications, telling them about procedures, providing parent training and serving as a support or leading a family to other foster or adoptive families. In addition to extensive use of foster and adoptive parents as informal and volunteer recruiters, some agencies have encouraged their foster parents as recruiters by offering monetary rewards for bringing in friends and family members to be foster parents, or contracting with them as recruiters, supporters, and parent trainers.

As informal conversations and sharing by foster parents with their own networks in a powerful means of recruitment, the issue of foster parent retention is crucial. Retaining foster parents that have already been recruited is critical because this will reduce the number of new homes needed, and the expense of training new parents, as well as focuses agency attention on the treatment of veteran foster parents. To address recruitment without assessing and improving retention may be potentially self-defeating for an agency. Foster parents need to be treated as valuable agency resources whose significant contribution to children and families is recognized and rewarded in a variety of ways. This respect for veteran parents will engage them as effective informal and formal recruiters. The satisfied, experienced foster parent is the foundation for any recruitment strategy. The satisfaction of adoptive parents and their role as references for an agency and recruiters for waiting children is also significant.

There are several issues to highlight with regard to foster care and to adoption: (1) the importance of cultural competency in recruitment strategies; (2) the linkages between foster care parenting and becoming an adoptive parent; and (3) the central role of recruitment in agency service delivery.

Cultural Competency

With an over representation of children of color in out of home care, the child welfare system must do more to provide culturally competent services to communities of color. Cultural competence respects the culturally-defined needs of the populations served and acknowledges culture as a force that shapes behavior, values and institutions. It recognizes natural support systems such as the family, community, church, and healers in various populations. It acknowledges that the concepts of family and community are different for various cultures and even for subgroups within cultures. (Cross, et.al.)

Within a system cultural competence requires a congruent set of behaviors, attitudes and policies that come together in away that enable that systems to work effectively in cross-cultural situations. Cultural competence calls for the awareness of the dynamics that result from cultural differences and expands cultural knowledge while being vigilant in adapting services to meet culturally unique needs. It requires that staff are committed to providing culturally competent services with an awareness and acceptance of cultural differences, an awareness of their own cultural values, that they understand what occurs in cross-cultural interactions, have basic knowledge of the culture of the people with whom they are working and an ability to adapt practice skills to fit that culture. (Cross, et.al.)

For example, programs such as Tayari and Nuestros NiZos in San Diego have been successfully linked to and obtained support from the communities they serve. They have adapted policy, program and practice to meet the needs of children served. Tayari and Nuestros NiZos are satellite offices of the San Diego County Adoption program located in the African American and Latino communities with staff representative of those communities. Staff speak the language and dialects spoken in the community. Nuestros NiZos has recruitment brochures and posters, applications and other written materials in Spanish.

These agencies, and other programs such as One Church One Child and Friends of Black Children in North Carolina and Tennessee, recognize the strengths of the communities they serve and reach out to leaders in the community. These leaders can serve as gatekeepers to the community. With these leaders sanctioning the agency's recruitment effort, entry into the community is possible. The Institute for Black Parenting in Los Angeles has also worked with community leaders and celebrities as spokespersons for their recruitment efforts. These leaders facilitate the agency's access to people in the community. They can also help to shape policies and procedures that are congruent with the culture and traditions of their communities.

Such successful programs have worked with institutions in the community that have historically served the communities such as the African American church. Ministers have made it possible for agencies to present the need for resource families to their congregations. In some states press conferences are held at each meeting of the Board of Directors of One Church One Child which bring the media into the communities. The media in turn relay the message that children need families and the ministers support the recruitment effort in the communities they represent. Churches have also sponsored adoption parties in the community.

In order to reach the Latino community in Southwest Detroit, the Michigan Department of Social Services staff have reached out to grass roots organizations in their recruitment effort. A contract for recruitment of foster and adoptive families was developed with such a community organization.

These programs have built upon traditions in their communities whereby families cared for their children by simply taking in other families' children in time of need or through informal adoptions. Programs which build on these traditions let the communities they serve know that in fact there are children from their communities in the system and have explored both blood and non-blood kin as resources for children that come to the agencies' attention. They incorporate the history and language of the culture of these communities into their work and celebrate and seek to preserve the culture of the communities. They recognize the importance of cultural identity for children and children's needs for continuity not only with family but also with the community.

In the arena of adoption, successful programs have worked with the knowledge that research has documented: that families of color are meeting the needs of adopted children with special needs, (Rosenthal and Groze) and that families of color do adopt and some groups adopt a rate higher to their representation in the general population than do European Americans. (Mason and Williams)
Foster Care and Adoption Linkages

Generally, there has been more of a focus on adoption recruitment but research points out the need for collaboration between foster care and adoption programs. Recruitment efforts successfully used in adoption programs can be used in foster parent recruitment. It is estimated that 40% to 90% of children with special needs are adopted by their foster parents. Foster parent adoptions have been found to be an effective avenue to permanency through adoption for children of color. (Minority Adoptions)

In fact the Westat study indicated two ways of reducing or eliminating the gap between the adoption placement rates of white children and children of color. The gap was reduced in communities with a positive attitude toward the local public adoption agency. Agencies reported efforts to reach out to communities and develop public awareness programs designed to improve community attitudes and knowledge of the adoption process. They had broadened their recruitment efforts to encourage families of color, single persons and modest income families to adopt. The second way the gap between adoption placement rates of white children and children of color was eliminated was with an active adoption recruitment program in the agency coupled with the presence of a foster family willing to adopt. This was despite the fact that children of color were less likely to have a foster family interested in adopting them.

Certainly if permanency planning is the goal for children, the need to consider foster families as potential adoptive families is apparent. Agencies need families who can accept a child who will be reunited with the family but also who are prepared to adopt the child if the child becomes available for adoption. As agencies do this, they need to consider whether they are making foster care placements appropriate to meet the life long needs of children. These needs include ongoing developmental needs, safety and health needs, a sense of belonging, and family and cultural continuity and connectedness. Many agencies have begun to do joint foster and adoptive parent recruitment and preparation for fostering and adopting. Agencies that consider families as resources for children seek to help these families determine whether they want to act as a foster parent who will work with the agency only to return children to their birth family or move to an adoptive family; whether they could foster a child but be willing to adopt the child if the child becomes available for adoption; are wanting to adopt but are willing to take a child who is not legally free for adoption; or only will consider adopting a child already free for adoption.

If agencies have foster parents that could adopt, but are not, it is important to identify the reasons why this is so. In the past agencies prohibited foster parents from adopting. Today most states have policies that allow foster parents to adopt children who have been in the home for a period of time and have formed an attachment with the foster family. However, there may be agency barriers to foster parent adoptions. For example, foster parents caring for children with complex emotional, developmental or medical needs may be discouraged from adopting because of the state's policy on adoption assistance. The family me be receiving a special foster care rate due to the child's complex needs, but if they adopt, the adoption assistance rate would not exceed the regular foster care rate. Some states have changed such policies so the adoption assistance payment is comparable to the special foster care rate. This has facilitated the adoption of children who otherwise would not have been adopted.
Agency Recruitment Initiatives

In order to focus recruitment efforts, recruiters must clearly be aware of the type of children who are in need of foster and adoptive families and the families are who are likely to foster and adopt in order to focus recruitment efforts. This mean that recruitment must be an integral part of the entire out of home care program. Only in this way is it possible to adapt recruitment efforts in a timely fashion to any changes in the population of children needing services. If there are now younger children entering care, the recruitment program and materials will have to reflect these children. Further, those placing children need to inform the recruitment effort about the types of families that need to be recruited. Historically the middle class, college educated, two parent family has been held out as the ideal family. Research now has begun to confirm what practitioners have known for years. Families with modest incomes, lower educational levels or where there is only one parent are doing fine as foster and adoptive parents. They may be the parents of choice in many instances. (Rosenthal, Groze, Curiel)

The integration of recruitment into the total out of home care program emphasizes the need for staff to be ready, willing and able to help viable, committed families through the process. Those staff charged with preparing and assessing families must respond promptly and with a welcoming approach to those families who can become resources for children. Failure to do so undermines recruitment efforts. Families who do not receive such a response will question the agency's sincerity about their stated recruitment objective of finding families for children.

This may begin with the first telephone call a family makes to the agency in response to some recruitment effort. It is crucial that staff who are knowledgeable about the children and the procedures of the agency are available to take these calls. It is particularly important when children are featured in the media or when particular recruitment campaigns are in progress that staff be available when calls come in. There must also be sufficient telephone lines to ensure that calls get through.

In addition, staff who work with the children awaiting adoption must prepare them for any specific child recruitment efforts as well as the children's caretakers so that they can support the child as these efforts are being made. Such preparation requires that the children fully understand the plan for adoption, are willing to participate in recruitment efforts, and that there are no surprises if friends, school mates, teachers or others see the recruitment material . Children must not be given false expectations about the outcome of recruitment efforts, and workers and care takers must be available to support children following recruitment efforts, regardless of outcome.

Staff must be available to begin the preparation and assessment process in a timely fashion following family's initial inquiry. The process and the procedures need to support, educate and engage prospective families in a process of self-assessment that will allow them to make an informed decision about fostering or adopting and about parenting a specific child. Procedures that do not take into account family work schedules or child care needs will not help families get through the process. A process that is lengthy and focuses primarily on difficulties families have faced rather than how they coped with these difficulties or the strengths they have, may discourage families who actually have what it takes to parent a child who has been abused or neglected.

Values and attitudes of practitioners are also important. For example, workers may hold out for a two parent family for a child on their caseload regardless of whether their assessment of the child specifically documents such a need. The two parent family still is a value even though half the children in this country are likely to spend part of their lifetime in a single parent household. A worker's values in this regard can delay or prevent a child from placement with a family who may be well qualified to parent the child.

Workers' attitudes about children's behavior and needs are also important. If the worker is overwhelmed by a child's behavior or questions the ability of the child to live in a family setting or does not understand how a family can care for a child with complex medical or emotional needs, that worker will have difficulty recruiting a family for that child or preparing a family to foster or adopt the child. Training and supportive supervision can help workers to make decisions that go beyond individual perceptions of the complexity of certain children's needs. Peer team work and consultation can also help workers focus on the permanency needs of children, as well as support difficult decisions. Collaboration between professionals of different service systems can also assist workers in truly understanding children's medical, emotional, behavioral, and developmental needs as well as becoming familiar with services families may need to access.

Collaboration between agencies and jurisdictions is also necessary. An agency that has a child needing a foster or adoptive family must be willing to place the child with a family prepared by another agency, county, or state. Usually such placements occur when trust has been established between individuals in the various organizations, jurisdictions and agencies. It is critical that agencies explore strategies to establish relationships and network with other organizations that may be resources for children who need families. Statewide, region-wide, or national child welfare conferences help develop networks that allow staff to put faces to names and establish trust. Various networks such as the local consortium of public and private foster care agencies, regular meetings of foster care staff from different counties, local and regional adoption networks such as the Northwest Adoption Exchange, the Rocky Mountain Adoption Exchange and meetings of representatives for the Interstate Compact for Adoption and Medical Assistance also encourage collaboration. They allow for the development of relationships in which all recognize that such collaboration cannot end at the time of placement. The placing agency has the responsibility to ensure that the family receives services necessary, such as adoption assistance, to support the adoptive placement.

All of this requires commitment from every level of the organization. Staff must have adequate training to prepare and assess children and families for fostering and adopting and to provide support to families. There must be policy and procedures to guide them in their work. Funds must be committed in order for staff to do recruitment and to promptly respond to families who respond to recruitment efforts. Administrators must provide leadership in developing positive working relationships with communities of color and encouraging the development of more culturally competent responses to these communities.

Recruitment and retention efforts cannot be a one time campaign or a two year demonstration project. Recruitment must be ongoing and must be systematized in the child welfare program. It requires the development of skills in marketing and working with the media. Agencies have become aware of the need to involve their public information office in recruitment or to hire public relations staff or consultants.

All recruitment efforts need to be evaluated to determine their effectiveness. Such evaluations must go beyond how many recruitment presentations were made or how many children were featured in how many radio or television spots. Even the numbers of families responding to recruitment efforts or the number of children placed cannot stand alone as measures of effectiveness. Recruitment efforts must be evaluated in the context of the total out of home care program. Recruitment efforts must be guided by objectives established for the total foster care and adoption program that focus on outcomes such as retention of families who enter the process and appropriate p placement of children. How many families got through the process is more important than the numbers recruited. The number of children placed for adoption is dependent upon the numbers of children available for adoption, but factors such as how and when children are identified as needing adoption are important issues to be evaluated. The various factors that effect outcomes must be included in evaluations to determine the effectiveness of particular approaches and ways of improving recruitment and retention practices in order to increase children's opportunities for permanency whether through reunification with their birth families or adoption.

Summary

In summary, successful foster and adoptive family recruitment does the following:

ensures necessary preparation of children and their caretakers
realistically portrays the children who are need foster and adoptive families and advocates for the child
gains community support and participation and is community-based
develops as an integral component of the total foster care/adoption program
takes risks to present waiting children to the public in attempts to achieve permanency for them and recognizes all kinds of families as potential resources for waiting children
takes advantage of every opportunity to highlight the needs of the children and the process
obtains commitment from all levels of the organization
requires regular review for quality improvements and results effectiveness by agency and community persons
occurs on many levels - public awareness, public information, in behalf of a specific child or specific children
facilitates collaboration with various systems and agencies that impact a child's permanence
requires cultural competence and utilizes the natural community mechanisms to provide the message regarding the need

Agencies which have been found to be successful in placing children of color for adoption have demonstrated cultural competence which is essential to the opportunities available to the disproportionate numbers of children color awaiting adoption. many of these agencies are also successful in recruiting foster families who reflect the population of children served. Characteristics of these agencies are that they:

Have staff of the same cultural/racial heritage as the children and families
Take a welcoming approach to applicants
Minimize bureaucratic procedures
Locate offices so they am readily accessible to members of the community and are in the community
Have persons who are culturally competent and sensitive in decision-making positions in the agency
Facilitate and encourage community involvement and control in the agency
Have written materials in the language of the community and staff able to communicate in the language and dialect of the community
Seek blood and non-blood kin as potential resource families
Encourage and support foster parent adoptions

References

Cross, Terry I; Bazron, Barbara J.; Dennis, Karl W.; Issacs, Mareasa R., Effective Services for Minority Children Who Are Severely Emotionally Disturbed, CASSP Technical Assistance Center, Georgetown University, 1989

Mason, Janet; Williams, Carol W.; "Adoption of Children with Special Needs: Issues in Law and Policy. Ellen c. Segal, Ed. American Bar Association, 1985.

_____, Minority Adoptions, Inspector General of the US Department of Health and Human Services, 1988

Rosenthal, James A.; Groze, Victor; Curiel, Herman, "Race, Social Class and Special Needs Adoption," Social Work, Vol. 35, No. 6, 481-576, Nov. 1990

Rosenthal, James A.; Groze, Victor K., Special Needs Adoption: A Study of Intact Families. New York, Praeger Press, 1992.

The Study of Adoption Services for Waiting Minority and Nonminority Children, Executive Summary: Westat, Inc. Rockville, Maryland, 1986.

The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance of Wilfred Hamm (Children's Bureau), Phyllis Gurdin (Leake & Watts Services, New York), and Jake Terpstra (Children's Bureau).

Attachments:

Attachment A:   Statute and Conference Report
Attachment B:   List of Regional Administrators, ACF
Attachment C:   Exemplary IV-B Recruitment Plan Elements
Attachment E:   ABA Monograph on the Multiethnic Placement Act

Some of the attachments to the Monograph are also available, they are named Attachment F and Attachment G