Diligent recruitment 101

Diligent recruitment is the strategic approach of child welfare agencies to identify, develop, support, and retain foster, adoptive, and kinship families to meet the needs of children in foster care.

More than working hard to recruit families, diligent recruitment involves child welfare agencies using data-driven, comprehensive best practices to engage and support families.

Diligent recruitment practice includes the following concepts: 

• Using data to quantify and describe the children and youth in your system.
• Focused recruitment: recruiting families that match the needs of your children and youth.
• Family support: retaining and supporting adoptive, foster, and kinship families.
• Customer service models to support foster, adoptive, and kinship families.
• Child-specific recruitment: finding the right family for an individual child.
• Youth engagement: involving youth in decision-making about their future.
• Hearing youth voice—the importance of listening to and learning from young people in care.
• Removing barriers to licensing families and improving permanency outcomes.