Family recruitment

Permanency is the goal for every young person in foster care, and for most, that means safe reunification or placement with kin. When neither is possible, young people need families ready to commit. These are often older youth, sibling groups, and young people with disabilities or complex medical needs. Recruiting, preparing, and supporting families for them is a major part of our work.

Our approach builds on the strengths of everyone involved, welcomes all families, and draws on our expertise in communication, connection technology, and journey mapping to keep youth at the center every step of the way.

Building on strengths

Child welfare systems tend to highlight deficits. Families are screened for shortcomings, caseworkers are measured by what hasn’t happened yet, and young people are described by their histories and case files.

We start from a different place:

• Families who come forward are doing something remarkable. We trust that, with the right information, they can open their hearts to the young people waiting.
• Caseworkers carry heavy loads with too few resources, and they show up anyway. With the right training and tools, they can find families for the young people they serve.
• Young people in foster care are more than the circumstances that brought them into the system. They are funny, creative, resilient, contradictory, still-becoming people who deserve a family that helps them thrive.

Focusing on individuals’ strengths is the best way to begin relationships that lead to permanency for youth.

Welcoming everyone

That’s why we welcome all prospective families. Many families first exploring foster parenting or adoption imagine bringing home a baby or a young child.

In some systems, these families are screened out early, before they’ve had a chance to learn about youth in foster care and rethink what their family could look like. We encourage everyone who is curious and, over time, help them build realistic expectations. We believe nearly every caring adult can be the right fit for someone.

Supporting families’ journeys

We produce ads, secure donated media, and build websites that combine two things families need: clear information to help them decide whether foster parenting or providing permanency is right for them and inspiration in the form of real families’ stories.

We also connect with families through social media, email campaigns, chat, and texting—and we’ve built a reputation in the sector for digital strategies that put the right information in front of families at the right moment.

Our information sessions and trainings help prospective families understand both the needs of youth in care and the licensing process. We then guide them into one-on-one support and stay with them through every stage of their journey to welcome a new young person into their homes, and even after.

Supporting caseworkers with training and tools

Serving children and youth in care means supporting their caseworkers—the hardworking, dedicated people doing their best for kids.

Most social work programs offer little training on foster care, adoption, or other permanency options, which means most caseworkers are learning on the job. We fill the gap with practical information and training, tools, and connection technology to help caseworkers engage youth and prospective families, sometimes partnering directly with them to identify families who would be a good fit for a specific young person.

Improving systems through journey mapping

To understand how families experience the child welfare system, we borrow a private-sector technique called journey mapping.

This method involves interviewing families (and sometimes caseworkers) and analyzing what they tell us to identify the phases of their journey and corresponding challenges. The results show what families are doing, thinking, and feeling as they explore and pursue foster parenting, adoption, or guardianship. They point our state partners and us toward systems changes to pursue and moments where we can step in with information and support. Read about our journey mapping work in Washington state.

Keeping the focus on youth

Throughout family recruitment, even as we continue to engage families and learn from their experiences, we keep youth’s needs in focus.

We help families learn about youth in care and build their capacity to help. We amplify youth’s voices in the messages we use to reach new families. We train caseworkers how to engage youth in permanency planning and engage them ourselves—helping them share what they hope for in a family in their own words, on their own terms.

The goal is permanency

Every family we welcome, every caseworker we train, every journey we map, and every youth we engage serves the same goal: ensuring all young people have family connections that will be there no matter what, long after their 18th birthday.