Child-Focused Recruitment: What is It and Why Does It Work?
By Rita Soronen
The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption exists for one reason: To dramatically increase the number of children adopted from foster care. Currently there are more than 130,000 children in the U.S. and Canada waiting for permanent loving homes. And each year more than 20,000 youth turn 18 or 21 and leave foster care without the adoptive family promised to them.
The number of children waiting to be adopted from U.S. foster care has consistently exceeded the number of finalized adoptions. Strategies for recruiting and matching adoptive families for these children have a history of anecdotal rather than evidence-based development. Cataloging children online or through the media is common practice and supported by Federal funding, but there is scant evidence to suggest it is an effective method for effectively recruiting appropriate families, particularly for those most at risk of aging out of care-older youth, sibling groups and children with mental and physical challenges.
For more than 30 years, Rita Soronen has worked on behalf of abused, neglected and vulnerable children, providing leadership for local, state and national efforts working to improve the juvenile justice and child welfare systems, while striving to assure safe and permanent homes for North America’s children.
Leading the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, a national nonprofit public charity, since 2001, and the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption-Canada since 2004, Ms. Soronen works to find adoptive families for each of the more than 130,000 waiting children in the United States and Canada’s foster care systems.
