Extreme Recruitment

I read an interesting piece in this month’s Time Magazine entitled Foster Care: Extreme Edition. It described in detail the unique family-finding efforts employed by a Missouri agency to identify permanent homes for their hardest-to-place children and youth. Using private investigators, they track down as many family members as possible in hopes that one will step up to adopt.

Extreme Recruitment is in fact very similar to Wendy’s Wonderful Kids, an innovative program that has been in place for the past seven years. The National Adoption Center’s own staff of Wendy’s Wonderful Kids recruiters employs the same tactics in hopes of finding “long-lost” relatives to provide permanency. Our success rate is excellent (~40%) and we are most proud of our association with the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption and Wendy’s restaurants. It certainly gives credence to our motto – There are no unwanted children, just unfound families.