VFA Outlines Policy Priorities for Diligent Recruitment
On July 18, VFA’s board approved the following positions to facilitate the recruitment of foster and adoptive parents who reflect the racial and ethnic background of the children in foster care.
Definition Change: Add language defining diligent recruitment to include “active efforts to identify, engage, approve, and support prospective relative caregivers, including fictive kin.”
Plan Requirements: Require diligent recruitment plans to include plans for family finding (including how to engage, approve, and support relatives and fictive kin) and child-specific recruitment for every child, as well as age-appropriate engagement of children/youth in recruitment efforts. Require states to engage parents and those who were in care or were adopted in creating diligent recruitment plans.
Data Collection: Require and provide funding for state data collection and reporting on the race and ethnic background of recruited, licensed, and placed foster/adoptive families, including analysis of barriers to placements. Require reporting and analysis on kinship placements and barriers to such placements.
Review: Include OCR (Office of Civil Rights) review if a state does not have a pool of foster and adoptive families that reflects the racial and ethnic diversity of the children in care.
Funding for Diligent Recruitment: Add targeted funding for specific projects (through Adoption Opportunities) to recruit, train, and approve families that reflect the racial and ethnic backgrounds of the children in foster care.
Funding for Training: Add targeted funding for training of judges, court staff, CASAs, and GALs (through the Court Improvement Program) and caseworkers/other child welfare professionals (through Adoption Opportunities or special appropriations) on issues of race, culture, and equity.
Among these positions, the recently introduced Data-Driven Foster Parent Recruitment and Retention Act of 2022 included some of the state plan and data collection recommendations (bullets 2 and 3).
This is an article from Voice for Adoption’s free monthly public policy newsletter.
