Recruitment Ideas
Recruitment Ideas & Overcoming Barriers to Placement Of Teens
Below are resources for learning how to recruit homes for teens in foster care and how to overcome the barriers that get the way of recruiting homes and placing teens in permanent homes.
Videos of Interest:
Wendy’s Wonderful Kids’ Child Focused Recruitment Approach Proven Successful For Teens
Check out this short video promoting the recently released five year evaluation of the Child-Focused Recruitment Approach to finding adoptive homes for older youth in foster care that the Wendy’s Wonder Kids program utilized in identifying adoptive families for teens and special needs children in foster care. Thank you Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption for seeing to it that this research has been made available to all of us practioners in this field. The Executive Summary notes:
“The WWK program has greatest impact among older children and those with mental health disorders. Children with mental health disorders are three times more likely to be adopted than those not served by a WWK recruiter. The WWK model yields increasingly larger impacts among children referred at older ages: for children referred to WWK at age 8, the likelihood of adoption is 1.5 times higher for a child served by WWK than a child who was not; among those referred at age 11, the likelihood was twice as high; among those referred at age 15, the likelihood of adoption was three times as high.”
Slam Dunk! The best way to find adoptive and permanent families for teens is go to the teens and focus our recruitment efforts on them and their individual needs. As Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption fittingly points out in the video that the Wendy’s Wonderful Kids recruiters “don’t try to find the right child to fit a family; they find the right family to fit a child.” Watch this video and get ready to shed a tear:
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Three Part Series on Youtube Entitled: Breaking Barriers to Teen Adoption
Watch this Great Two Part Series: “WE INTERRUPT”
Listen to what Minnesota Youth have to say about being recruited for. This fabulous production was made possible by Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS)
Watch this terrific conversation:
Gary Mallon and Pat O’Brien had entitled A Discussion about Permanency for Older Adolescents.
View Video
Also, watch this excellent short film that follows six teens who aged out of a mid-western State foster care system.
View Video
Audio Programs of Interest:
You Gotta Believe! offers an excellent radio forum where we interview many adoptive parents of teens and emerging adults who moved in as teens and a variety of professionals who work with families with this unique background.
Listen to any one of the 100 most recent broadcasts we conducted on WGBB radio 1240 on the AM dial every Sunday evening at 6:30pm EST.
Click to Listen
Writings of Interest:
Want To know how to Recruit Families For Older Children & Teens In Care?
Want to learn how to find families for teens?
Read this great publication and desk reference from the National Resource Center for Family Center Practice and Permanency Planning at the Hunter College School of Social Worker called Six Steps To Find A Family: A Practice Guide to Family Search and Engagement .
Important Research Article based on one of YGB’s federal grants:
Children and Youth Services Review: ”An Examination of Theory and Promising Practice for Achieving Permanency for Teens Before They Age out of Foster Care” by Rosemary J. Avery.