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Child Specific Recruitment

On any given night over 1500 of Oregon’s children are spending the night in foster care.  While the vast majority return home or go to live with relatives, many foster children become eligible for adoption through the state of Oregon. Sadly, foster youth who are older or have special needs often wait for over two years before a permanent family is found. Boys & Girls Aid partners with Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS) to help reduce the amount of time necessary to find these children permanent loving homes.

The process starts with a DHS representative contacting a Boys & Girls Aid Child Specific Recruiter about a child or group of siblings that need additional efforts on their behalf to find the best-suited family for adoption or long-term foster care.  The Child Specific Recruiters (CSR) work together with the DHS caseworker to learn about each child; his or her unique background, strengths, needs and challenges.  The CSR then develops an Individual Recruitment Plan (IRP) specific to the needs of the child or sibling group, and reviews that plan with the DHS caseworker. These plans can include a variety of activities that all support the efforts to find a loving family for the child. Examples include having professional photos of the children taken for use in articles, on adoption website and in presentations; studying applications of potential adoptive parents, contacting other professionals involved with adoption about the child, and much more.
 
Our main objective is to assist in any way possible to find the children in Oregon’s foster care system the loving families they deserve.

For more information about Child Specific Recruitment, please contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or call 503.542.2349.

Boys & Girls Aid also partners with the Dave Thomas Foundation to offer similar services under the Wendy’s Wonderful Kids program. Boys & Girls Aid hires specialized recruiters to find permanent, loving homes for children in foster care who have been waiting the longest, or who have unique needs that might require a special family. Click here for more information about this program.