Use youth data to drive foster family recruitment

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About this recommendation

Foster children do best with families who can most meet their needs. When a kinship caregiver isn’t available, the next best thing is a family that can keep youth in their school, community, and culture. Use data on the characteristics of youth when they enter foster care (such as language spoken, religion, and school district) to drive recruitment efforts.

How to do this

Create a report you can run repeatedly to identify the characteristics of youth when they enter foster care. Include attributes like school district, gender identity, age, race, ethnicity, religion, language spoken, and special needs. Cross-reference this report with incoming inquiries to identify and prioritize matching families.

Work with your recruitment team to devise local strategies to attract matching families. Target recruitment efforts in neighborhoods where there are higher removal rates, in order to help those children remain in their communities.

Sign up for the working group’s data-driven recruitment pilot by contacting Marina Nitze.

Anticipated costs and benefits

Costs

Benefits

  • Low to no cost
  • Youth more often placed in homes within their existing community, school, and culture
  • Increased foster family recruitment

Who's doing this

3 of 54 states and territories have implemented this recommendation.

  • Hawaii regularly runs a report with data on each foster child that includes attributes like their origin, age, whether they have a disability, and whether they are now placed in another school district. This report is the foundation of much of its recruitment work.
  • Colorado has a data-driven digital recruitment plan that includes data on age, race, gender, and other identifying factors (IDD, large sibling group, sexualized behaviors). They also use GIS mapping to drive targeted recruitment efforts.
  • Fairfax County, VA cross-references zip codes where they have the highest needs against zip codes listed on new foster home inquiry forms in order to prioritize those families. They also host recruitment booths at farmers’ markets and other events in neighborhoods with the highest removal rates, and use Census data to select which local libraries to host recruitment events at.