Children's Bureau Express

LGBT Family Recruitment Strategies

A new research brief explores the benefits of increasing the recruitment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) adults to be foster and adoptive parents. The paper was produced by several members of the Children's Bureau's Training and Technical Assistance (T&TA) Network. The authors suggest that recruiting more diverse resource families not only provides a larger pool of qualified families for children in care, but also can provide children with families with unique parenting abilities.

The paper discusses some of the strengths that LGBT parents can bring to the table, such as the ability to sympathize with the child's feelings of being different, to overcome barriers, and to expose children to the concepts of diversity and the acceptance of others. A detailed discussion of specific issues and strategies that agencies should be aware of when recruiting LGBT families is also provided. Some of the topics addressed include:

Special considerations to take into account when recruiting LGBT families, such as an agency's capacity to recruit and how to prepare for possible negative reactions
Suggestions for developing strong, consistent, and positive communication and recruitment strategies
The importance of providing an open and welcoming experience when prospective LGBT parents contact an agency

The collaborative paper was produced by The National Resource Center for Adoption, the National Resource Center for Permanency and Family Connections, and the National Resource Center for Recruitment and Retention of Foster and Adoptive Parents at AdoptUSKids. Strategies for Recruiting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Foster, Adoptive, and Kinship Families is available on the National Resource Center for Adoption's website:

http://www.nrcadoption.org/wp-content/uploads/Strategies-for-Recruiting-LGBT-Foster-Adoptive-and-Kinship-Families.pdf (411 KB)

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