This half-day presentation will discuss how to find unconditionally committed permanent parent(s) for teens using this three prong recruitment approach: Friends, Acquaintances, & Community Education (F.A.C.E). We explain the need to find permanent homes for every teen in our care in order to prevent their homelessness upon discharge from care and dispel myths about where the homeless come from.
From there, the workshop moves to a discussion about permanency planning goals and how an inappropriate goal can cause half the homelessness in our culture. We will discuss outcome studies about what happens to youth after their discharge from foster care alone and how our attitude is the only obstacle to finding permanent parents for any teen in our care. Then it’s time to get practical with how-to guidance for finding permanent parents for every teen in our care using the Friends Approach (recruitng people the youth know), The Aquaintance Approach (Introducing the Youth to persons recruited through general recruitment techniques he or she will get to know), and how taking an approach of Community Education that leads many of the folks from the general public to consider adopting these much older youth via the education process of our 10 week A-OKAY/MAPP classes given in nine different locations in New York City’s five boroughs and Long Island, cable access television, and a live radio broadcast.
Full day trainings will also incorporate an afternoon of options including:
- Recruitment Case Scenarios to address specific challenges encountered by people recruiting homes for teens and young adults still in care.
- Skills development in any area of F.A.C.E: outreach to families; documentation; facilitating communication; mediating disagreements; and getting through to resistant workers.
- Parent Preparation and support.