Diligent Recruitment of Families for Children in the Foster Care System

The Adoption Opportunities program through the Children's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families provides discretionary funds for projects designed to eliminate barriers to adoption.

In October 2008, the bureau awarded cooperative agreements to nine grantees for:

• Improving permanency outcomes for public child welfare agencies by implementing comprehensive, multi-faceted diligent recruitment programs for kinship, foster, concurrent, and adoptive families
• Facilitating concurrent planning activities to integrate the diligent recruitment program with other agency programs, including permanency and foster care case planning processes
• Evaluating the implementation of the diligent recruitment programs to document processes and potential linkages between diligent recruitment and improved outcomes
• Identifying sites that other public agencies can look to for developing improved diligent recruitment methods

Find out more about the nine grantees' individual projects and products they will produce:

• Oklahoma Department of Human Services – Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
• Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services – Cleveland, Ohio
• County of Santa Cruz – Santa Cruz, California
• Maryland Department of Human Resources – Baltimore, Maryland
• City and County of Denver – Denver, Colorado
• New York State Office of Children and Family Services – Rensselaer, New York
• Missouri Department of Social Services – Jefferson City, Missouri
• Kentucky Department for Community Based Services – Frankfurt, Kentucky
• Ramsey County Community Human Services Department – St. Paul, Minnesota