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A

• Accept background check electronically
• Ask about connections repeatedly over time
• Ask youth about supportive adults
• Ask family members for more family members
• Align checklists to statutes
• Accept photos to resolve minor pending inspection items
• Allow youth to explore and select programs available to them

B

• Be gentle when interacting with kin for the first time

C

• Complete background check forms at orientation
• Check in frequently on first placements
• Check in with your resource families on a regular basis
• Create life books for youth in care

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

• Establish a dedicated family-finding team
• Email license renewal requirements
• Encourage foster family support groups on social media
• Empower licensing workers to approve relative licensing exceptions
• Emergency shelter homes

F

• Find alternatives to physical mail for sharing documents with youth
• Focus recruitment on fostering, not adoption
• Find opportunities to recognize foster families

G

• Give families a dedicated licensor
• Give cash or prepaid cards for youth stipends
• Give new resource parents a welcome bag

H

• Help relative placements access financial assistance
• Hire current foster parents to help train new foster parents
• Hire youth with lived experience for roles at your agency

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

K

• Keep a schedule of when youth will age out

L

• License homes while social distancing
• License undocumented family members

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

N

• Normalize making licensing exceptions for relatives

O

• Offer online foster parent training

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

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

S

• Send appointment reminders
• Set reminders to stay in touch with families who submit inquiries
• Summer Camp Stipends
• Social Media Policy and Practice Guidance

T

• Track critical renewal dates on a calendar
• Track detailed referral information for new inquiries
• Talk with families as soon as possible when they submit an inquiry

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