A Seamless Approach

To support a program in six North Carolina counties that gives children an active role in selecting potential adoptive parents, The Duke Endowment committed $1.4 million from 2006-2010.

Insights

The Child-Centered Recruitment program is becoming a core service for the Children's Home Society of North Carolina, and is strengthened by synergy with two other programs: Family Finding (begun in 2008) and General Family Recruitment (started in 2003). The three programs work together seamlessly to help more children achieve permanent placements with caring families. Those working with Child-Centered Recruitment have reported the following lessons:

• Listening to the children and giving them an active role in their own recruitment makes the whole process more seamless and successful — from recruiting a family to finalizing the adoption. When children feel they have played a more active role in selecting their family, they tend to be happier about the placement and have a greater investment in developing a positive relationship with their new family.
• All children yearn for a sense of belonging and a permanent relationship. Even children who say that they do not want to be adopted often change their minds after a potential family has been identified.
• Departments of Social Services are over-burdened and sometimes cannot focus on recruiting adoptive families for children who have been in care the longest. Ensuring safety and stability in current foster placements, completing required paperwork and going to court hearings can take precedence to seeking out potential adoptive families. Without a recruiter who dedicates time to children who have been waiting the longest, it is difficult to achieve permanency.
• Some social workers may hold biases about certain types of families, or only consider families who meet specific criteria (e.g., a traditional two-parent family). Child-Specific Recruiters can help address these barriers by working closely with the social workers and children, developing positive relationships with both, and being a major advocate for permanency on the child's team.

Impact

In the first two years of the child-centered recruitment program (2006 to July 2008), the Children's Home Society of North Carolina served 78 hard-to-place children and placed 39 — meeting the program's target rate of 50 percent. Before the program began few, if any, of these children were placed each year.

The child-centered recruitment program has dramatically changed the Children's Home Society's relationship with social service departments in many counties. Often, the Children's Home Society has assumed a critical role within case management teams as the central voice advocating and advancing the issue of permanency from the child's point of view.

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Vice President
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