Los Angeles County Self-Assessment Report
Los Angeles County Self-Assessment Report
Los Angeles County Self-Assessment Report
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<strong>Los</strong> <strong>Angeles</strong> <strong>County</strong> <strong>Self</strong>-<strong>Assessment</strong> <strong>Report</strong><br />
<strong>County</strong>. The following are examples of DCFS recruitment efforts:<br />
• Community Booths – Face to face interaction with the public providing information to<br />
the need of permanence for children supervised by the Department of Children and<br />
Family Services<br />
• Faith Based Events – Partnering with Faith Based Organizations for a more<br />
targeted/focused campaign for both general and child specific recruitment<br />
• Media – Particularly radio spots with a specific demographic listening population. It<br />
is particularly effective in conjunction to promoting an upcoming event. Our<br />
Wednesday’s Child segments on Fox 11 News results in regular calls.<br />
• Heart Gallery – Our photo gallery of waiting child is used to draw in families and has<br />
been very effective in very public places such as shopping malls.<br />
• Improved Customer Service – Retraining our staff to be more professional and<br />
courteous as well as doing follow up telephone calls to those who missed their<br />
scheduled orientation.<br />
• Word of Mouth – This is still our most popular method of recruiting families. As our<br />
families have positive experiences with DCFS, they tell others.<br />
• Orientations – Orientations are located county wide. Three-hour orientations are<br />
conducted by Community Care Licensing and the DCFS Resource Family<br />
Recruitment Section staff to disseminate information about licensing, adoption, and<br />
fostering. A minimum of 15 orientations are provided per month.<br />
DCFS features children on various internet sites and receive between 30-50 adoption<br />
home studies on a monthly basis. All Placement and Recruitment Unit social workers<br />
are responsible to review these studies and generate matches with their waiting<br />
children. About 30 children that are older, part of a large sibling group, or have special<br />
medical needs are placed in out of state homes annually. DCFS funds the services<br />
needed to supervise the placement and finalization.<br />
In 2007, 12, 464 calls were made to the Resource Parent Intake Line. There were<br />
5,161 English speaking and 1,722 Spanish speaking potential foster and adoptive<br />
parents that registered to attend a Resource Parent Orientation Meeting. There were<br />
2,736 English speaking and 1,034 Spanish speaking potential foster and adoptive<br />
parents that actually attended the orientation meetings.<br />
SPAs 4, 5 and 6 appear to be the areas of the greatest need for resource families, as<br />
these are the communities in which there are high numbers of children being removed<br />
from their homes. These areas include those families who are most disproportionately<br />
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