[atouchofheaven]

Hi everyone!

i just got a position working in a collaboritive with a foster care agency recruiting foster families. i'm wondering if anyone out there would like to share if they were recruited and how? was it through a specific event, newspaper ad, TV commercial, friends, internet, etc? please give details if possible and your opinion on the type of recruitment. thanks.

[Heyheather]

We weren't really recruited. We felt called to care for children (my husband is a pediatric eye doctor) and contacted the agency that my cousin works for.

There is an agency in town that advertises quite abit. On radio and ads. There is something that bothers me about this but I can't put my finger on it exactly. I think that doing this is a calling not for everyone. I also think that the ad is somewhat misleading as a sweet young child's voice is featured and we all know that these children aren't always so sweet and come with different degrees of issues. JMO. Friends of ours are currently going through foster parent training and have been pressured to take older children and were told that they aren't licensing homes for just infants anymore - they have too many already. These friends were also made to submit information and test scores from their bios that are homeschooling - not required from the state at all.

I'm not sure that recruitment is really the best idea other than letting the community know that the agency is there and doing this type of work. And I'm sure you know word of mouth is huge!

[Scrapsathome]

These friends were also made to submit information and test scores from their bios that are homeschooling - not required from the state at all.

WHAT!? I would be livid if they suggested such a request to our family! They can't do that! That is clearly an attempt by that agency to see if they should be investigating that family for "educational neglect" of some sort. You should tell your friends to contact HSLDA.org (Home School Legal Defense Assoc.) immediately and let them know what happened. That sort of invasion of privacy should not be tolerated. I bet they don't check the school records of foster family's children that are public schooled.

As to the OP, we originally inquired about foster parenting years ago when we heard an advertisement on the radio for a Christian non-profit group that licenses families for foster care only. We decided to go through the county DCFS so that we could be a potential adoptive home, too, not just foster. We had wanted to do it for years, but the radio ad prompted us to actually inquire.

Then, around Christmas of '06 we were browsing some websites and ended up inquiring through Adoptex.org and they sent us an info packet on local county fost/adopt meetings. The rest is history.

Jess

[jbee]

dh was a therapeutic support staff, had worked also in a youth detention center, and alternative school so had been around foster kids, and just people in the social work field.
turns out our first placement was a boy and his brothers that dh had been a t.s.s. for

[sdiedre]

My agency goes to churches to present fostercare, answer questions, etc. They specialize in recruiting AA families

I DO think recruiting is important - too many people don't understand fostering. While blanket ads may not be the way to go, getting out into the community IS. Tell people how they can have a lasting impact on a child's life. Plus, not all kids are high-needs. I have been fostering for a year and have had 8 kids - none were over the basic level. If more families would be willing to foster ONE child, everyone would be better off.

[shaylynn]

My journey expands over many years! When I first got out of highschool, I was going to volunteer at a drug house for babies in Chicago but my family was worried about my going there for so long being so young. So then I called, I believe, Catholic charities expressing interest in fostering and they said no, we don't let single people do it. It got put on the back burner for awhile and the there was an ad in the paper looking for homes for unwed moms. I inquired on that and was once again told no, this time because I lived too far out in the country to get them to the hosptial if they should go into labor. (I lived 12 miles from the closest hospital-I guess no one in the country in supposed to get pregnant) So for several more years, it was on the back burner again until I saw a front page story of the Living section of our Sunday paper that told of the need and the current number of children in my state needing homes and so I called that number listed and that got the ball rolling. I asked them if being single would be a factor and they said, 15 years ago it would of been a factor but now over 25% of foster parents are single. I did the classes and everything else and have been doing foster/adopt for 8 years now. I have always just liked kids my whole life. Probably growing up with 4 sisters and 6 brothers had something to do with that though, huh?

[mama-2-3]

Like some of the others, we weren't really "recruited." We always felt in our hearts that we would do this some day. We made the calls and pushed ourselves through the process.

[atouchofheaven]

thank you all for your responses. it definitely gives me an idea of what to work on. there are certainly some different views on the subject of recruitment. i think that most of my job will be educating the community about foster care and dispell some of the rumors about it. maybe then, more people will be interested. my region is actually has a well-functioning department and we don't get "pushed" or "pressured" into anything we aren't comfortable with. so i can honestly encourage people to be involved in some way and still have a clear consience that i'm not set them up in a bad situation. thanks for the information and more stories are always welcome.

[Robbin]

We had done unofficial foster care for relatives. Then we went to a school event (and there was also a similar one at a YMCA) that had booths set up by various community agencies, with a little craft or activity at each booth for the kids, while the parents were able to look at literature and talk to agency reps.