A
B
C
D
- Distinguish important mail for foster families
- Don’t license homes that are only interested in adopting infants
- Don’t close inquiries
- Describe foster parent licensing requirements with flexible wording
- Designate certain families to be on call after hours
- Designate some homes specifically for emergency placements
E
F
G
H
I
- Increase foster family retention with renewal check-ins
- Include recruiters in follow-up activities
- Include placement and recruitment teams in regular case planning meetings
- Include pending families in placement searches
- Identify natural supports for caregivers
- Include sibling visitation in post-adoption plans
- Include the importance of sibling connections in resource parent training
K
L
M
- Make a genogram
- Make sure supportive adults have a robust presence at planning meetings
- Make keeping in touch with kin a formal foster family responsibility
- Make a plan to keep youth connected to their supportive adults
- Make it easy for families to take high-value training for renewals
- Maximize use of relative licensing exceptions
- Measure retention carefully
- Make sibling visits fun
N
O
P
- Provide clerical support for licensing workers
- Provide safety inspection items for families in need
- Provide safety inspection checklists ahead of time
- Provide financial bonuses to foster families for recruitment referrals
- Pay for Respite
- Professional (Salaried) Foster Parents
- Placement Stability Bonuses
- Pay to Keep Homes Open
- Pay Kinship Caregivers Until They Get Licensed
- Provide More Ways for Foster Parents to Earn Money
- Protect youth privacy on social media
- Provide childcare at resource family events and trainings
- Provide training for supportive adults
- Provide transportation to visits with supportive adults
- Provide transportation for sibling visits
R
- Recruit relative caregivers to become general caregivers
- Reflect your community in recruitment materials
- Respond quickly to inquiries with more information
- Require senior staff sign-off for non-relative placements
- Require private agency capacity for emergency placements
- Remove barriers for contact with familiar adult siblings
- Reimburse resource parents for providing transportation to sibling visits
S
T
U
- Use social media to find family members
- Use an expansive legal definition of kin
- Use a red team to prevent placements in group homes
- Use evacuation plan magnets
- Use bilingual staff members instead of interpreters
- Use direct deposit to distribute extended foster care stipends
- Use specific language about the end of foster care
- Use youth data to drive foster family recruitment
- Use social media for general foster family recruitment efforts
- Use social media for targeted foster family recruitment
- Use Extreme Family Finding methods when necessary
- Use inquiry data to identify recruitment gaps
- Use digital marketing campaigns for foster family recruitment
- Use a Heart Map to identify a youth’s important relationships
- Use social media to find missing children
- Use DNA to find more family connections
- Use parent visits as another opportunity for bringing siblings together