The National Center for Diligent Recruitment, a service of the US Children’s Bureau, works to improve outcomes for children and youth in foster care by helping child welfare systems and professionals like you develop and implement strategic, data-driven diligent recruitment plans. Our offerings include technical assistance, diligent recruitment planning and implementation resources, and training for staff. We’re dedicated to assisting states, tribes, and territories in the work to recruit, develop, support, and retain foster, adoptive, and kinship families who reflect the race and ethnicity of children in foster care and can meet those children’s needs.
Our goals
- Increase the capacity of states, tribes, and territories to effectively collect and analyze quantitative and qualitative data to guide their targeted recruitment efforts.
- Provide on-site, intensive technical assistance to support the work of states, tribes, and territories in constructing their robust diligent recruitment plans that have significant and strategic outcomes.
- Identify, document, and disseminate methods and approaches to diligent recruitment that are informed by evidence, include system change work, and can be replicated. This may include furthering the evidence-base of family finding, relative outreach, reunion support, and intensive recruitment and retention services within the communities of origin of the children and youth in the foster care system.