Imagine…

-Being six years old and having your best years behind you

-Your skin isn’t the “preferred” color

-Being 10 and only having a 10% chance of having a forever family

-What it must be like when mom is not a safe word

-Having a brown paper bag and 20 minutes to pack your

belongings to move to your new home

-Graduating or getting married and not having anyone to walk you down the aisle

Now, imagine that YOU could make a

difference.

A Family For Every Child 1675 West 11th Avenue

Eugene, OR 97402

Phone: 541-343-2856 Toll Free: 1-877-343-2856

Fax: 541-343-2866 E-mail: info@afamilyforeverychild.org

Website: www.afamilyforeverychild.org

Mission: A Family for Every Child is dedicated to finding loving, permanent families for every waiting foster child.

Overview: A Family for Every Child is a non-profit organization located in Eugene, Oregon, focusing on improving the lives of foster children nationwide by finding adoptive families and providing support systems for waiting foster children. Through our many programs we have developed a unique approach to developing and implementing our organization’s mission. We innovate and make progressive change in the child welfare system by using business tools, such as Salesforce, webinars, Constant Contact, and Text Notification.

History: A Family for Every Child was founded by Christy Obie-Barrett, the mother of 12 children, 9 of whom are adopted. Christy was looking for a way to make a difference in the lives of more children. In January, 2006, A Family for Every Child was incorporated as a not-for-profit business in Oregon and began recruiting for many Oregon foster children. Today it has grown into an organization that recruits for thousands of children nationwide.

 

Web site: http://www.AFamilyForEveryChild.org  

Statistics: Adopted 3,119 children

1,008 sibling groups

1,172 minority children

995 teenagers

served 637 children photographed

282 map families matched

230 mentor matches

120 family finding cases

52 heart gallery venues

Our Programs

Recruitment Heart Gallery: Our organization started with one recruitment tool, the Heart Gallery, and has expanded to four key recruiting tools. The gallery is a photographic exhibit featuring professional photographs of foster children from the local area. Under each photograph is a description of the child’s interests and personality traits, along with his or her current needs. The needs consist of finding permanent adoptive families, and often they are as simple as older children looking for mentors. The photographs are displayed in various venues around the city. We currently have over 50 venues displaying nearly 100 children.

Professional Photos: In addition to the Heart Gallery, we can arrange to have professional photos taken for children and make the photos available for distribution nationwide. We will arrange for professionals to photograph children to assist in recruitment efforts. Recent, nice and professional photos showing the children doing hobbies or activities they love get the best responses from prospective adoptive families. These pictures can be used in our Heart Gallery, on our web site and in our matching events. We have found that nice photos grab the attention of prospective adoptive parents and are great recruitment tools for all children.

 

Targeted Emails: A Family For Every Child’s targeted e-mails go out to families matching the specified child’s needs. We run a report through our database and select families specifically fitting the child’s special needs and wants. For example, if there were an older autistic child in Washington State who needed to stay in the Pacific Northwest, we would send out a targeted e-mail with the child’s name, state, age, biography and picture to families who were interested in adopting an older child, had experience with children with autism, and who lived in either Idaho, Washington or Oregon. These e-mails are especially helpful with children who have very specialized needs and with children who need urgent placement.

 

Matching Events: Our Online Child Matching Events and Online Family Matching Events utilize user-friendly and

accessible technology to better match children with their forever families. Social workers present children from their caseloads to an audience of prospective adoptive families via an online webinar. In order to allow social workers to give more information than is accessible to the public, all families who attend the event pre-register through A Family For Every Child and must be home-study approved. Families love these webinars and say they are a great way to hear about the children’s real personalities. The families appreciate being able to hear directly from the social workers who know the children best. A Family For Every Child’s Online Child Matching Events are becoming increasingly popular, and they are especially helpful to foster children who have harder times finding forever families.

Permanency Family Finding: Our Family Finding Program is a proven method to connect children with family and other caring individuals who can provide lifelong love and affection. By searching the child's records, using internet search tools, and calling and engaging relatives and connections, we are able to discover and support permanent, loving relationships for the child in foster care. The expectation is to reduce the numbers of children being raised in foster care. Family members may provide contact, connection, and a home for a child.

 

Mentor Program: Our Mentor Program was created to provide one-on-one mentoring for youths living in foster care. Each youth is matched with an adult volunteer mentor who has similar interests. They spend time together and form a friendship. The mission of our Mentor Program is to unite enthusiastic, dedicated, caring adult members of our community with youths in foster care. We aim to provide the youth with someone who can be a friend, will encourage and support the youth through life transitions, and will hopefully become a lifelong connection. Extensive Team Recruitment: Extensive Team Recruitment is a new program with A Family For Every Child. It combines our efforts at mentorship, family finding, recruitment, and child preparation. The Extensive Team Recruitment method was built upon the proven family finding model created by Kevin Campbell. The goal is finding a forever family for every waiting foster child. Extensive Team Recruitment’s tenet is that every

child deserves a forever family. We provide each child with a mentor, family finding, recruitment tools, and prepare him or her for a forever family. Our goal is to find forever families for 70% of children referred to Extensive Team Recruitment and to find connections for 90% of children participating in the program.

Family in 30 days: Family in 30 Days is a new program with the goal of finding a relative’s home within 30 days of a child’s entering foster care. By combining our Family Finding Program’s search methods, working directly with family and case staff, and maintaining an extreme sense of urgency, we hope to place a child in a relative's home as soon as possible. This helps prevent the children from entering the foster care system and keeps them connected with family and loved ones. Foster children living with relatives are less likely to experience frequent moves, less likely to re-enter foster care, and they are more likely to feel loved. Should a family member be unable to provide a home for the child, A Family For Every Child endeavors to connect the child with a specially trained foster family whose ultimate goal is to help reunite the child and family.

Life Books: Much like scrapbooks, Life Books are created for foster children to tell their life stories. Each child living in foster care is provided with a Life Book created especially for him or her in order to preserve his or her past. Life Books positively impact the lives of children and preserve heritage and memories otherwise largely lost.

Family Services Adoption Agency: Family for Every Child’s Adoption Agency is different than many existing agencies. It focuses entirely on "special-needs" adoptions. Most of these children are over six years old, are part of a sibling group, have some physical, mental or emotional disabilities, or are part of an ethnic minority. The Adoption Agency guides prospective parents through the process of a special-needs-child adoption in all stages of the adoption process. These helpful services consist of home-studies, updates, reviews for people in the process, and committee representation for families who have been identified as prospective adoptive families in Oregon.

. Matching Assistance Program: This program was created

to aid families through the adoption process. We are

committed to assisting families, case workers, and adoption workers in their efforts to place children in adoptive homes. This special log-on web site is geared toward parents. It is a liaison they can call, and it is an ever-growing additional-listing web site of many more children who cannot be seen on a public web site.

 

Family Support Program: Our Family Support Program has been developed to help families and families-to-be build a positive and healthy support system within our community. As part of this program, we are able to provide guidance, answer questions, create support groups, find mentor families, and extend knowledge of available resources to new adoptive families.

Welcome Books: Similar to the Life Books, Welcome Books are scrapbooks. However, the Welcome Books are created by adoptive parents as a way to introduce a child to his or her new family. This is a neat way to engage the new parents and cultivate a good relationship between them and the child.

These are among the many questions a child may have:

“Are we there yet?”

“Why is the sky blue?” “Where do babies come from?” “Why do we have a leap year?”

“How do birds fly?” “Why do you blink?”

“Who created the alphabet?” “Is Bigfoot real?”

“Why haven’t I been adopted?” should not be a question any child has to ask.

Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes an entire community to make change. We are working toward making change to improve the lives of children across the nation. No matter what a child’s needs, age, background or story, our staff is dedicated to finding forever families for all waiting foster children.

This is a huge goal to achieve, and we hope you will join us in improving the lives of thousands of children languishing in long-term foster care.