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Child welfare professionals serving children in foster care are guided by a shared belief that every child deserves a safe, loving and permanent family. Federal law also requires child welfare agencies to use recruitment efforts that are child-specific for every child with a permanency plan.

Professionals have taken multiple paths to achieve legal permanency for the young people on their caseload. This blog will explore two of these approaches — child-specific recruitment and child-focused recruitment — both putting the child’s needs and interests first yet differing in their recruitment styles.

Kyleigh (adopted at 14) and Brittany (mom)

What is Child-Specific Recruitment?

Child-specific recruitment starts with building a child’s profile. After creating this, recruitment begins.

A core component of the child-specific recruitment approach utilizes public displays of the child — including photos and descriptions on the internet, television, newspapers, billboards, etc. — as well as other in-person, community events to find permanent homes for youth waiting in foster care.

The primary audience viewing these public profiles or attending events often includes individuals who have already decided to pursue foster care adoption or those in the process of considering licensure. Placing the responsibility primarily on the family to reach out to the agency, rather than the child’s team taking a proactive approach in exploring the meaningful connections the youth has already built.

Unfortunately, statistics show that most prospective families are not looking to adopt older youth. This decreases the rate of effectiveness for this recruitment approach for youth who are most at risk of aging out of the foster care system.

Another consideration is that publicity used in child-specific recruitment can unintentionally stigmatize youth. A child’s consent is not always required for their name, photo and personal information to be displayed for anyone to see. Children may find the publicity to be deeply embarrassing, as they may not want people in their community to know that they are in foster care. And those concerns about privacy may be exacerbated by the lasting nature of information in the digital age. Additionally, if a child is not chosen by a family, it can increase their feelings of being unwanted and the trauma associated with it.

What is Child-Focused Recruitment?

Child-focused recruitment emphasizes the child’s input in their permanency plan and focuses on identifying pre-existing relationships in their lives who may be potential resources. Professionals implementing this model employ an exhaustive recruitment strategy, rather than casting the broad net of general awareness (e.g., PSAs, social media campaigns, etc.).

Some core components of child-focused recruitment include:

Relationship with Child

Building a relationship with each child occurs by ensuring regular contact. This approach fosters trust and openness so that the child is comfortable sharing about their desires, hopes, dreams and fears, including: 

• Discussing who is meaningful to them
• Providing their perspective on what they want in a permanent family
• Discussing why they do or do not want to be adopted

For youth who express an initial opposition to adoption, this relationship can help them work through fears and misconceptions, often resulting in more openness to permanency.

Case Record Review

Conducting an exhaustive review of the child’s existing custodial case file to document:

• The date and reason the child was placed in foster care
• The child’s most recent assessments
• Chronological placement history
• Significant services provided (past and present)
• Identification of needed services
• Next court date
• All significant people in the child’s life (past and present)

This process may be time intensive, but it has proven to be successful when looking to identify a permanent family for youth waiting in foster care.

Diligent Search

Implement an ongoing and intensive process of identifying and contacting people who could be potential resources in achieving permanency for the child. That includes conducting aggressive follow-up with those identified contacts, with the knowledge and approval of the child’s caseworker. Professionals are encouraged to use every tool at their disposal, including the exhaustive case record review, online search tools, public records and conversations with the child, their relatives, family of origin and caseworker.

Hear from Macie, a Wendy’s Wonderful Kids® recruiter, about how diligent search helped her find a permanent family for Madison.

Network-Building

Continuously identify, locate and contact people close to and knowledgeable about the child to serve as resources on the path to permanency. While this will certainly include members of the child’s team, the goal is to think more broadly about that network to include individuals who would not typically be interested in adopting from foster care but who would be interested in adopting a child they already know. That could include, but is not limited to: 

• Caseworkers
• Foster parents and former foster placements
• Child’s attorney, CASA and/or GAL
• Teachers, mentors and coaches
• Neighbors
• Therapists
• Distant relatives
• Staff at a group home/residential treatment facility
• Faith-based representatives
• A best friend’s family

The Impact of Child-Focused Recruitment in Achieving Permanency for the Longest-Waiting Children

There are aspects of child-focused recruitment that professionals can apply to their work right now to help achieve legal permanency for youth lingering in foster care. Yet, due to many barriers it is hard for a caseworker to maximize this recruitment approach without additional support.

That’s why the Foundation created the Wendy’s Wonderful Kids program.

Through Wendy’s Wonderful Kids, the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption establishes innovative co-investment partnerships with states and provinces to support the hiring and training of professionals, known as recruiters, who implement an evidence-based, child-focused recruitment model.

A rigorous, five-year national evaluation by Child Trends revealed that the model is up to three times more effective at finding permanent homes for children most at risk of aging out of the system without a family. That includes older youth, children with special needs and siblings who have been waiting in foster care the longest.

Learn more about Wendy’s Wonderful Kids and view a list of agencies that are helping to implement the program across the U.S. and Canada.