Silly as it may sound, Extreme Recruitment was inspired by the television show Extreme Home Makeover. This program is an exciting race against time to build a house in just a week by coordinating hundreds of professionals and volunteers. Likewise, Extreme Recruitment is a race to find an adoptive home for a child in a fraction of the time it would normally take (12-20 weeks vs. 12-24 months). And it works! In only 12 months, 42 of 60 youth we worked with were matched with adoptive families; accomplishing three times the number of adoption matches in a third of the time.
We work exclusively with the hardest-to-place children: ages 10-18, sibling groups, African-American children, and youth with emotional, developmental, or behavioral concerns. Extreme Recruitment is successful for ANY child in foster care because it:
- requires weekly, intensive meetings between the child’s professional team for 12-20 weeks
- demands concentrated support from child welfare supervisors
- focuses on preparing the youth for adoption, including their mental health and educational needs
The added ingredient that makes Extreme Recruitment so effective is our private investigator. Originally, we tried to do the investigation work ourselves, but our contact rate with relatives was a dismal 23%. Within two weeks of hiring an investigator, the contact rate skyrocketed to 80%.
Our investigator finds relatives through internet tools, court databases, and good old-fashioned gum-shoe detective work. Many times, he will find a grandmother or an aunt who will say, “Thank God you are here. I have been waiting years for you to find me.” Other times, he must use persuasion and tenacity to convince relatives to meet with him.
This program is so powerful that we are now convinced that it will change the child welfare system in St. Louis. Locally, the entire child welfare system—the Children’s Division, private agencies, and the courts—are excited about Extreme Recruitment’s results.
With this collective enthusiasm, we fully believe that each one of the 500 legal orphans can be served within 5 years. Here is our plan:
- 500 kids
- 5 years
- 1 child at a time