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PRACTICE NOTES
For North Carolina's Child Welfare Workers ►
From the NC Division of Social Services and the Family and Children's Resource Program
NC Refocuses on Diligent Recruitment of Families
(Fig. 3) underscore the importance of doing
everything possible to find and hang on to
families for kids in care.
Knowing we can do better, a broad array
of NC stakeholders has developed a plan to
help us bring about needed changes. This
article will explain our state's vision for the
future, our new Diligent Recruitment and
Retention (DRR) plan, and what it means for
you and your agency.
A Need for Improvement
In 2015 federal reviewers were concerned
our state could not show that routine, state¬
wide diligent efforts were being made to
find families for children with special needs
and families that reflect the ethnic and racial
diversity of the children in DSS custody. They
also noted that NC did not provide con¬
sistent standards for diligent continued next page
Let us hear from you!
To comment about some¬
thing that appears in Prac¬
tice Notes, please contact:
John McMahon
Jordan Institute for Families
School of Social Work
UNC-Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC27599-3550
jdmcmaho@unc.edu
Newsletter Staff
Sarah Marsh
John McMahon
Laura Phipps
Visit Our Website
www.practicenotes.org
Figure 1
Figure 2
NC Foster Care & Adoption Facts
12,000
Number of Children in Foster Care in NC
As of April 30, 2017
10,000
Foster Care Aaencies
• 100 public/county DSS agencies
6,000
• 81 private child-placing agencies
• 97 residential facilities
4,000
Foster Homes
2.000
6,843 licensed foster homes:
0
2010
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
• 38% were family foster homes
supervised by county DSS agencies
Duncan, etal., 20)7
• 58% were either family or
Figure 3
therapeutic foster homes
Nl
mber of NC Children Adopted from Foster Care
supervised by private agencies
1,800
• 4% were residential/group/
1,600
• — ^
institutions
1,400
1 -- —
Adootion Aaencies
1,200
— —
• 100 public/county DSS agencies
800
• 42 private adoption agencies
600
Adoptive Hpmef
400
• 1 1 ,335 children adopted from
200
foster care from 2007 to 2014
0
2010 2011 2012 2 013 2014
Sources: NC DSS, 2017a & 2017b; USDHHS, 2017
USDHHS, 20)7
Volume 22, Number 3
June 2017
This publication for child
welfare professionals is
produced by the North
Carolina Division of Social
Services and the Family
and Children's Resource
Program, part of the Jordan
Institute for Families within
the School of Social Work
at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In summarizing research, we
try to give you new ideas for
refining your practice. How¬
ever, this publication is not
intended to replace child
welfare training, regular su¬
pervision, or peer consulta¬
tion — only to enhance them.
for Children in Foster Care
Recruitment and retention of families for
children in foster care matters a great deal.
When we have enough foster and adop¬
tive parents and kin caregivers, it is easier
to place children in their home communities
and school districts. More siblings can stay
together. Careful matching with caregivers
is easier. Children awaiting adoption don't
have to wait as long for forever families.
Understanding this, North Carolina built
a solid network of state, county, and private
agencies to find and support resource families.
See Figure 1 for a snapshot of this network.
But we've had a bit of a wake-up call.
In 2015, federal reviewers concluded we
need to improve our system for recruiting
and retaining resource families. Rising num¬
bers of children in foster care (Fig. 2) and
declines in adoptions of waiting children
