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May 2011Vol. 12, No. 4Diligent Recruitment Projects on AdoptUSKids Site

The Children’s Bureau awarded cooperative agreements in 2008 and 2010 for the Diligent Recruitment of Families for Children in the Foster Care System. The 2008 grantees have begun to develop materials and presentations, and these are available on the AdoptUSKids website. Even in the early stages of implementation, the programs have yielded lessons learned and new ideas that child welfare agencies can use, for example, to improve Child and Family Services Reviews outcomes and enhance recruitment efforts.

One project, Kentucky's Project MATCH (Making Appropriate and Timely Connections for Children), has garnered attention through its successful use of outreach tools, community intervention, press coverage, and other strategies in its diligent recruitment efforts. Many of the projects' materials and products illustrate those processes and strategies clearly.

The Kentucky Project MATCH webpage lists samples of outreach tools, newsletters, press releases, and press coverage. Outreach tools include photos of a billboard, a tray liner for a local restaurant, a packet of flower seeds, and a blurb on State employees' pay stubs. Trifold brochures include first-person stories of Kentucky foster families. For child welfare professionals, there are several leaflets and presentations describing recruitment and retention strategies, as well as a project model document, project evaluation, information, and two presentations of grantees meetings. The March 2010 issue of the project's newsletter, Connections, describes how regions were selected for intervention and how to use market segmentation as a targeted recruitment tool.

Access all of the grantees' materials from the AdoptUSKids' diligent recruitment webpage:

www.adoptuskids.org/professionalResourceCenter/diligent-recruitment