The Collaboration to AdoptUsKids

Collaboration to AdoptUsKids

Who We Are

The Children's Bureau's AdoptUsKids initiative is designed to help States and Tribes find and support foster and adoptive families for waiting children by providing new and enhanced recruitment tools, training, and technical assistance.

How We Can Help

AdoptUsKids provides training and technical assistance to help States and Tribes achieve their title IV-B Child and Family Service Plan requirements and title IV-E CFSR targets on issues that pertain to the development and implementation of quality recruitment and retention services for foster and adoptive families and in the area of interjurisdictional placement practices.

Training and Technical Assistance
AdoptUsKids' service goals are to:

Help States and Tribes develop a pool of waiting families that reflect the ethnic and racial diversity of children for whom foster and adoptive homes are needed
Increase the effective use of cross-jurisdictional resources to facilitate timely adoptive or permanent placements for waiting children
Promote and enhance the role of foster and adoptive parents in recruitment and planning
Assist States and Tribes in ensuring their recruitment and response processes are driven by practices whose effectiveness has been demonstrated and based on relevant data
Provide a forum for facilitated peer-to-peer networking, consultation, and technical assistance

Support for the CFSR Process
AdoptUsKids supports States in the CFSR process by:

Providing individualized assessments of recruitment and retention needs and interjurisdictional placement practices
Exploring and disseminating information about established, effective recruitment activities and initiatives
Offering access to a team of national experts for consultation and training on recruitment, retention, and interjurisdictional issues
Producing definitive booklets for child welfare professionals and prospective families on best practices in recruitment and retention of families, writing profiles on waiting children, matching waiting children with families, working with military families, engaging community partners, and implementing targeted recruitment approaches

Training and Consultation to Support Agencies and Build Internal Capacity
Current areas of expertise include:

Recruiting foster and adoptive families (general, targeted, child-specific, and child-centered)
Placing children interjurisdictionally
Using the national online photolisting for waiting children
Writing profiles on waiting children
Developing and sustaining community-based partnerships
Developing strategic planning and consultation related to the development of title IV-B recruitment plans
Responding effectively and supportively to inquiring families

Website and Photolisting
The partnership also maintains the AdoptUsKids website. The website is the first Federal online photolisting service featuring children waiting to be adopted from foster care.

Additional Components of AdoptUsKids
AdoptUsKids supports a variety of research, outreach, and other activities.

Supporting critical research on barriers to adoption
Identifying family factors that support long-term success in adoption of children from foster care
Establishing joint trainings and national meetings with child welfare administrators, adoption and foster care managers, and other child welfare professionals from the public and private sectors
Developing and supporting a network of adoptive parent organizations
Implementing a national campaign to recruit new adoptive and foster families for waiting children
Implementing recruitment response teams to assist States in responding to national, State, and local recruitment campaigns and to support and nurture interested families

For More Information

Address:	8015 Corporate Drive, Suite C Baltimore, MD 21236
Phone:	888.200.4005 or 410.933.5700
Fax:	410.933.5716
Email:	info@adoptuskids.org
Website:	http://www.adoptuskids.org
Contact:	Barbara Holtan, Project Director Melody Roe, T/TA 303.755.4756 x241

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