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The iCARE 365 (The Inter-Agency Community Adoption/Foster Family Recruitment Exchange).
Grantee Final Report
74 p.
Public Domain
Published: [2015?]
Download: https://go.usa.gov/xNKfs
This final report describes the activities and accomplishments of the iCARE 365 (The Inter-Agency Community Adoption/Foster Family Recruitment Exchange) project, a federally funded 5-year multi-faceted diligent recruitment program in Michigan which was designed to recruit, retain, train, utilize, and support a range of resource families for children/youth in Michigan’s Child Welfare System with a special focus on youth identified as juvenile sexual offenders, as well as youth placed in psychiatric treatment facilities and residential settings. The project was implemented in Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb Counties. The project was funded during fiscal years 2009-2013 and was designed to promote safety, permanence and well-being for Michigan children and to increase positive permanency outcomes for them by: increasing awareness of the need for resource families; improving timely achievement of permanency goals for children; increasing appropriate placement resources for teens, youth identified as juvenile sex offenders, youth in residential treatment settings, youth in psychiatric in- patient settings, children with disabilities or other physical care needs, African Americans, and large sibling groups; and improving customer service and increasing retention rates among newly recruited resource families. Information is provided on the needs of the community, the project model, key components of the program, project goals and objectives, key activities, collaboration, sustainability, and evaluation. Evaluation findings indicate there were no consistent trends when comparing project counties to the matched counties for the period FY 2009- FY2013, however, two of the comparison counties, Kent and Washtenaw, reported very low to no re-entries for 2013. There were also no meaningful patterns when reviewing the extent to which race of children/youth matched race of foster parent and the number of placements with relatives when reviewing FY2009 – FY 2013 data for participating and match counties.
Keywords:
foster adolescents; children with disabilities; mental disorders; Michigan; CHILD-SPECIFIC RECRUITMENT; African Americans; promising practices; MINORITY RECRUITMENT; FOSTER FAMILIES; OUTREACH; ADOLESCENT SEX OFFENDERS