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November 2019Vol. 20, No. 9Helping Communities Engage Local Partners to Expedite Permanency for Children and Youth

There are an estimated 123,000 children and youth in foster care in the United States waiting to be adopted, according to recent Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System data. This number has increased steadily over the last 5 years, demonstrating the urgent need to help communities expand access to resources that will help them recruit, train, and support adoptive families. In an effort to address this need, the Capacity Building Center for States issued a series of publications designed to help communities engage with partner organizations to work toward the goal of achieving timely permanency for local children and youth awaiting adoption.

The series provides several publications and additional resources that offer strategies for engaging local community organizations to reduce the number of children awaiting permanency by identifying, recruiting, preparing, and supporting adoptive parents. The series includes the following:

  • Engaging Faith-Based Communities to Achieve Timely Permanency for Children and Youth Waiting to be Adopted—A tip sheet that provides strategies, examples, and suggestions for how faith-based communities and child welfare agencies can work together to promote permanency for children and youth in foster care.
  • Engaging Nongovernmental Organizations to Achieve Timely Permanency for Children and Youth Waiting to be Adopted—A tip sheet that describes ways child welfare agencies can refer to nongovernmental organizations, which usually have strong ties to the community and expertise in reaching out to specific populations, about how to leverage their knowledge in order to remove barriers to adoption, expand successful pilot programs, and provide support to adoptive parents.
  • Engaging Philanthropic Partners to Achieve Timely Permanency for Children and Youth Waiting to be Adopted—A tip sheet that offers ideas, strategies, and examples of how child welfare agencies can garner the expertise of philanthropic partners to raise awareness and fund adoption recruitment as well as support adoption efforts and program evaluation.

The series, Engaging Partners to Achieve Timely Permanency for Children and Youth Waiting to Be Adopted, is available at https://capbuildcollab.prod.acquia-sites.com/states/topics/achieving-permanency/engaging-partners.