Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock () or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

June 2012Vol. 13, No. 5Site Visit: Missouri Extreme Recruitment

In March 2008, the Missouri Children's Division (MCD) noted that the teen adoption program in St. Louis seemed to take an extremely long time to achieve permanency for youth in care. MCD realized that the typical efforts to find family members led to instability in the family. Due to these concerns, a coalition of partners developed an initiative to increase adoption, permanency, and reconnections. The Children's Bureau awarded a grant to the Foster and Adoptive Care Coalition (FACC), Children's Home Services, and the Adoption Exchange to deliver direct service through the Extreme Recruitment grant with the assistance of several other partnering organizations. The resulting Extreme Recruitment project is a collaborative effort among agencies to increase adoption, permanency, and reconnection.

Extreme Recruitment (ER) is a 12- to 20-week individualized recruitment effort that includes preparing youth for permanency; conducting a diligent search to reconnect youth with kin; and achieving permanency through concurrent general, targeted, and child-specific recruitment. It consists of public and private partnerships, including MCD staff, contracted case management agencies, and contracted providers of foster/adopt training and postpermanency support services. The grant includes components such as providing services to unite the family, supporting the family as a whole unit, working with parents to understand and address behaviors and cope with stress, establishing a sense of unity among family members, and allowing families to feel a sense of community and comfort.

The program adheres to the following 10 principles in its diligent recruitment efforts:

  1. No linear thinking. We try ALL recruitment tools at once. General recruitment is reactive; Extreme Recruitment is proactive.
  2. Get out from behind the desk! Diligent search is done in the field, talking to relatives. It is not done in front of a computer.
  3. Don't take "no" for an answer. Teenagers may say that they don't want to be adopted. Although they may not want to be adopted by a stranger, they DO want to be reconnected with their biological family. Youth never stop longing to get back to their birth families.
  4. The number of strangers we can recruit is finite; the number of relatives we can recruit is infinite. The average American has 300 living relatives.
  5. Biological family members are more likely to adopt kids with the toughest challenges. Family may have an advantage by already knowing the youth’s history and needs.
  6. Weekly meetings are necessary. Too much happens with Extreme Recruitment from week to week. If not, then the team is not trying hard enough.
  7. Consensus drives Extreme Recruitment, not 100 percent agreement. Hear everyone's viewpoint. If unanimous agreement is not reachable, go with the majority.
  8. Pay attention to educational issues. The youth and the preadoptive family have enough on their plates. Get the youth's educational concerns taken care of BEFORE the child is placed.
  9. Build trust with the family. The youth's biological family has suffered incredible loss and grief. Honor it. Apologize to the family for the hurt that the child welfare system has caused.
  10. It's not just about permanency; it's about identity. Long-term foster care strips youth of their identity. Extreme Recruitment gives it back.

For more information about this project, contact Sally Howard, Program Manager, Missouri Alliance of Children’s Agencies, at sally@e-mcca.org, or visit the grantee's page on the AdoptUSKids website:

http://www.adoptuskids.org/about-us/diligent-recruitment-grantees/extreme-recruitment

The full site visit report will be posted on the Child Welfare Information Gateway website:

http://www.childwelfare.gov/management/funding/funding_sources/families.cfm 

The Missouri Extreme Recruitment Foster and Adoptive Care Coalition is funded by the Children's Bureau (Award #: 90-CO-10391). This article is part of a series highlighting successful Children's Bureau grant-funded projects around the country, emerging from Children's Bureau site visits.

 

cbexpress.acf.hhs.gov

An official website of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families and the Children's Bureau

Looking for U.S. government information and services? 

Visit USA.gov