Recruitment Training and Support

For families, social workers, foster parents and adoptive parents Family to Family involves bridging the gap of separation. This means bridging the gaps between birth families and foster/adoptive families in a gradual process that moves their relationship from mutual suspicion to civility, then to cooperation and eventually to trust, with the assistance and guidance of trained agency staff people.

But first, the appropriate foster/adoptive families must join the system, and then they must be supported so as to remain in it long enough to achieve Family to Family goals.

The essential first step, therefore, is the recruitment, training and support of foster/adoptive families with those goals firmly and always in mind.

Such work is crucial. The pool of available foster/adoptive families has been in steady decline nationwide over recent years, just as children coming into care are increasing in number. This is especially true for African American children and children with special needs. Recruiting parents for these children, making them successful in providing homes, and retaining them in the system is the only way to avoid having to place children in inappropriate, substandard or distant situations for lack of anything better.

It is hard to overstate the importance and interlinking of recruitment, training support. The three functions are critical to the success of Family to Family and they are so interrelated that the success of one determines the success of all.

From that first phone call in which potential foster/adoptive parents inquire about taking in a child, the agency should act to make the parents welcome, respected, accepted, and needed. The agency that succeeds in retaining successful families in its system will be the one that regards every applicant was a potential resource with something positive to offer, an important team member, even if that applicant may not meet requirements for receiving a child. If families have positive experiences with your agency, hey will share those experiences with others and will become your best recruitment tool.

At pre-service training, applicant families begin the mutual assessment process in which they and the agency staff discover strengths and limitations. The inevitable application procedures and red tape need careful handling so as not to irritate, frustrate or embarrass prospective foster parents. Relationships begin to build and families start understanding just what they might be getting into.

Trainers make all the difference here. Good ones can make the applicant families feel excited, eager and confident about their future with a child in need, but unskilled trainers can make them doubtful, anxious, fearful, bored, or reluctant to go any further.

Once a child is placed agency staff people need to e easily available for consultation, advice and problem solving. Continuing training, respite care, goods and services, and support for emotional and behavior needs can keep foster/adoptive parents functioning well as the hard realities of fostering set in.

The National Foster Parent Association says as many as 60 percent of new foster parents quit in the first 12 months and the primary reason they give is lack of support, communication, or response from the foster care system. It is far more cost effective for a state to retain experienced foster families that to recruit and train new families continuously.

Adapted from Annie E. Casey Foundation's Tools for Rebuilding Foster Care.