The Collaboration to AdoptUSKids

Who We Are

The Children's Bureau's AdoptUSKids initiative is designed to find and support foster and adoptive families for waiting children by providing new and enhanced recruitment tools and training and technical assistance (T/TA) to States and Tribes.

How We Can Help

In collaboration with the ACF Regional Offices and the Children's Bureau, AdoptUSKids provides T/TA to help States and Tribes achieve their Title IV-B Child and Family Service Plan requirements and Title IV-E Child and Family Service Review (CFSR) targets on issues that pertain to the development and implementation of quality recruitment and retention services for foster and adoptive families.

Training and Technical Assistance Service Goals

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 resource parents in recruitment and planning.
Assist States to enhance worker capacity, satisfaction and validation of their work in recruitment and retention.
Assist States and Tribes in insuring their recruitment and response processes are driven by promising practices & achieve desired outcomes.

Supporting the CFSR Process

Providing individualized assessments of recruitment and retention needs.
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 and retention issues.
Working strategically with child welfare agencies and Tribes to tailor T/TA services in the area of recruitment and retention.
Producing definitive booklets for caseworkers and prospective families on best practices in recruitment / retention of families, writing child profiles and matching waiting children with families.

Providing Training / Consultation to Support Agencies
Current areas of specific training expertise include:

Recruiting foster and adoptive families (general, targeted, child specific and child-centered)
Placing children across interjurisdictional boundaries
Utilization of the national online photolisting for waiting children (http://www.adoptuskids.org)
Best practice in writing child profiles
Developing and sustaining community-based partnerships
Strategic planning and consultation related to the development of Title IV-B recruitment plans
Responding effectively and supportively to inquiring families

Maintaining a Web Site and Photolisting
The partnership also maintains the AdoptUSKids Web site (http://www.adoptuskids.org). The Web site is the first Federal online photolisting service for children waiting to be adopted from foster care.

Additional Components of Adopt USKids

Supporting critical research on barriers to adoption.
Identifying family factors that support long-term success in special needs adoption.
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 / 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
E-Mail:	info@adoptuskids.org
Web site:	http://www.adoptuskids.org
Contact:	Barbara Holtan, Project Director Melody Roe, Director - The Adoption Exchange Education Center & T/TA for AdoptUSKids (303-755-4756 x241)

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