Hosted on August 20, 2024, the training was delivered by Claire Hopkins (she, her), Switchboard’s Training Officer for Child and Family Services. URM foster care serving agencies often face challenges recruiting, training, licensing, and retaining foster parents for unaccompanied refugee minors (URMs).
Misconceptions about refugees, the resettlement process, and the foster care system coupled with long licensing processes and complex systems can all contribute to individuals’ reluctance to foster URMs. This webinar will explore strategies to address these issues with creative recruitment methods, such as leveraging demographic and motivational data of current foster parents and conducting community assessments to identify current trends and other areas of need. We will discuss the importance of amplifying the voices of URMs and foster parents when using community engagement techniques to support recruitment. Additionally, we will focus on promoting accessible, inclusive, equitable, and flexible strategies for recruiting and retaining foster parents. Lastly, we will address when and how to use targeted recruitment approaches, as well as build the capacity of current licensed foster parents to welcome refugee youth.
By the end of this webinar, you will be able to:
– Gather and leverage demographic and motivational data of current URM foster parents to enhance recruitment efforts
- Apply community engagement techniques to amplify voices and stories of URMs and foster parents
- Determine when and how to effectively use targeted recruitment approaches
– Develop accessible, inclusive, equitable, and flexible recruitment approaches using diverse communication and marketing methods
