Don’t close inquiries

About this recommendation

Just because a family is not ready to foster today does not mean that they couldn’t be a strong placement option in the future. New data shows that it can take some families years between when they first take an interest in fostering and when they start an application. When systems delete or close out inquiries to meet short-term metrics like conversion rates, they also potentially lose out on a number of families who would have completed applications in the future.

Keep all your potential foster family inquiries open and find ways to keep families engaged with newsletters, email campaigns, and the occasional personal check-in. You can also keep interested families engaged by highlighting other ways for them to support foster youth, such as participating in a donation drive or volunteering at an event.

How to do this

• If your team maintains performance metrics around converting inquiries to applications, stop. Instead, focus on opportunities to encourage high-touch interactions with families, like phone calls or meetings, and ways to engage interested families in lower-level commitments like attending an event or participating in a donation drive.
• Identify ways to keep in touch with long-standing inquiries without taking up a lot of staff time, such as creating an automated email newsletter.
• Have a clear policy about what steps a family has to retake, and in what timeframe, if they begin part of the process but aren’t ready to complete it.

Anticipated costs and benefits

Who's doing this

3 of 54 states and territories have implemented this recommendation.

• In Frederick County, MD, if a family has completed PRIDE and not submitted an application packet within the next year, they must complete a PRIDE refresher. Many families take a long time to complete the application: more families take six or more months than the number of families who complete the application right away.
• Fairfax County, VA keeps all inquiries open. They report that families can take an average of two to three years to move from an inquiry to an application.
• Washington, D.C. adds new inquiries to their newsletter and checks in with families quarterly. They do not close inquiries. They report that they sometimes have a family become licensed after being on their inquiry list for as long as a decade.