Family Connections Project
From 2005 to 2010, Adoptions Unlimited, Inc. participated in a cooperative agreement with the Administration for Children and Families' Children's Bureau in the funding priority area, "Developing Adoption Services and Supports for Youth Who Wish to Retain Contact with Family Members in Order to Improve Permanency Outcomes."
The Family Connections Project proposed a new model for youth seeking permanency, which emphasized the exploration of open adoption and other permanency options for wards of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. Major achievements of the project included:
- developing a free online training course called "Maintaining Connections" for caseworkers;
- developing an openness curriculum and video for training foster/adoptive families;
- developing an openness curriculum and video for training court and legal personnel;
- developing an openness curriculum and video for training youth;
- beginning a mentoring program; and
- creating a theatre troupe and developing a DVD of their performance.
In addition to DCFS, we worked with two private agency partners: Lutheran Social Services of Illinois and Hull House.
The grant evaluators were Susan Smith and Jeanne Howard from the Illinois State University Center for Adoption Studies. They completed a literature review on openness and permanency arrangements, conducted focus groups with workers, families, youth, and legal personnel to learn about the barriers to openness, and evaluated trainings.
