Foster and Adoptive Home
Recruitment and Retention Roundtable

Enhancing Your Programming Model for
Foster Family and Adoptive Home Recruitment

Scroll down for site listing and complete agenda.

Answering the need for those agencies for whom the current recruiting model is simply not enough, AFCR presents a one-day intensive seminar Recruitment Roundtable that offers a planning session identifying challenges and opportunities for recession-based recruitment and retention, barriers and impediments to getting more for less out of your current recruitment efforts, offering programming strategies for developing a program model for successful foster home retention, the implications of retention programming on recruitment of foster families for your agency and promoting peer collaboration and support for your recruitment programming by your agency staff.

As this session presupposes your agency has a successful recruitment program, participants should be knowledgeable regarding your agency's recruitment program including pre-service orientation, in-service training components and in-service staff development. Participants are encouraged to bring a copy of their recruitment and retention plan(s) and examples of their recruitment materials.

Participants begin by defining the what, when and why of their current foster and adoptive home recruitment programming with special attention to home retention with a focus on the motivations for families to foster/adopt, develop an understanding of demands, stressors and malefactors that undermine that motivation, identify your agency's organizational and programmatic barriers to more successful recruitment and retention and then produce a comprehensive plan to ameliorate those barriers.

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Pre-registration is required; workshop space is limited - first come first served. The registration fee of $295.00 is per person; the training session is 9:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. The Curriculum includes: The Road to Quality Foster and Adoptive Care: A Comprehensive Recruitment Manual; Feathering Your Nest: Gaining and Maintaining Peer Support; Homes Recruiting Homes Kit; How to Establish and Maintain a Speaker's Bureau Kit, Developing a Program Model for Foster Family Home Retention plus topical handouts.

Completed registration forms or letter listing name, complete address, telephone and fax number >>PLEASE STATE SITE SELECTION<<, accompanied by payment of fees or by agency purchase order or authorization to invoice the agency will be honored subject to capacity limitations. Refunds honored less $45.00 administrative fee until site registration deadline, no refund after site deadline. Registration is site specific and is not transferable.

For space availability contact AFCR: 540-775- 7410 - 9:00 A.M.-4:00 P.M., Eastern, Monday-Friday.

Registrants will received written confirmation of registration.

Please make checks/ purchase orders payable to:

  • American Foster Care Resources, Inc.
  • AFCR's Federal Tax Identification Number #54-1220248.
  • For a copy of AFCR's W-9, click: W-9.pdf


FEE of $295.00 INCLUDES: Curriculum and handouts; continental breakfast, mid-morning break, mid-afternoon break. Any meals, travel or lodging not included.

Site: The all-day training will be held in the hotel property; individual reservations for sleeping rooms need to be made directly with the respective hotel, not through AFCR.

To receive the sleeping room group rate listed please mention that you are with the American Foster Care Resources group.

If you want a hard copy of the registration form please email us your postal address and we will add you to our mailing list. You may download the form here: (click) Roundtable Registration Form: The form is in Adobe Acrobat format. You may download and print the form. You will need the Adobe Acrobat reader software or the browser plug-in. It can be obtained from www.adobe.com.

SCHEDULE

2010

Texas
Dallas
March 19, 2010
Holiday Inn
2645 LBJ Freeway
Dallas, TX 75234
Sleeping Room Rate: $89.00 Sgl./Dbl.
972.243.3363
Site Registration Deadline March 5th.

North Carolina
Burlington
April 14, 2010
Ramada Convention Center
2703 Ramada Rd.
Burlington, NC 27215
Sleeping Room Rate: $63.00 Sgl./Dbl.
336.227.5541
Site Registration Deadline: April 1st .

Florida
Daytona Beach
April 23, 2010
Holiday Inn
930 N. Atlantic Ave.
Daytona Beach, FL 32118
Sleeping Room Rate: $89.00 Sgl./Dbl.
386.255.5494
Site Registration Deadline April 9th.

Pennsylvania
Harrisburg
May 5, 2010
Holiday Inn
I-83 & PA Turnpike Exit 242
148 Sheraton Dr.
Harrisburg, PA 17070
Sleeping Room Rate: $89.00 Sgl./Dbl.
717.774.2721
Site Registration Deadline April 21st.

Ohio
Columbus
May 12, 2010
Holiday Inn-Columbus-Worthington
7007 North High St.
Worthington, OH 43085
Sleeping Room Rate: $89.00 Sgl./Dbl.
614.436.0700
Site Registration Deadline: April 28th.

TIMETABLE & AGENDA

TIMETABLE

    8:30 AM Continental Breakfast

    9:00 AM Introductions & Setting the Agenda

    10:30 AM Break

    NOON Lunch on Own

    2:30 PM Break

    4:00 PM Adjourn

You may download the Roundtable Agenda in .pdf format here: (click) ROUNDTABLE AGENDA:

AGENDA

I. Challenges and Opportunities for Recession-based Recruitment and Retention

  • Sometimes the Impossible Is Impossible
  • Getting Lost Does Not Mean You Have a Lousy Roadmap

II. Where are You? Assessing Your Current Programming vis-a-vis Recruitment Goals

  • What You Have, What You Need and What You Can Realistically Expect to Get

III. An Overview of the Basics: Planned Recruitment Campaign

  • Reality Based Recruitment & Retention
  • Assessing Your Needs
  • Statement of Need
  • Recruitment & Retention Obstacles
  • A Planned Recruitment Campaign
  • Your Current Home Population
  • Evaluation Previous Efforts
  • Problems & Obstacles

IV. A Brief Focus on Retention: Good Homes You Keep Are Homes You Need Not Recruit

1. The Dynamics of Foster Home Retention: The Impact of Retention on Recruitment

  • Defining your 'services'
  • Unique
  • Non-competitive

2. Foster parents' personal barriers to their own success.

  • Demands
  • Irrational Ideas
  • Expectations
  • Appreciation
  • Challenge and Stimulation
  • Making a Difference
  • Team Work
  • Information

3. Defining Organizational Barriers to Foster Home Retention

  • Identifying systemic pre-service and in-service barriers
  • Promoting Organizational Change

4. Retention Strategies: A Laundry List

  • Integrating Program Components into Your Retention Model
  • Coordinating Your Retention with your Recruitment Programing

V. Jump-starting Your Recruitment: Quick Results and Longer Term Planning

  • Two Strategies for Quick Results
  • Having Someone Else Do It!
  • Building Programming Permanence
  • Working with the Enemy

VI. Feathering Your Nest: Gaining and Maintaining Peer Support within Your Agency for Recruitment and Retention

  • Barriers to Participation
  • Rewiring the Agency Staff's Mentality
  • Programming Support through Humor and Social Competition

VII. ENDINGS