In 2001, United Methodist Family Services (UMFS) was awarded a cooperative agreement with the Children’s Bureau (Administration on Children, Youth, and Families under the Department of Health and Human Services) to implement a Quality Improvement Center on Adoption. This agreement was part of a demonstration grant by the Children’s Bureau to study the usefulness of decentralizing funding from the federal government to a middle manager that would provide assistance to sub grantees. In essence, the Children’s Bureau would provide funding to a middle managing agency that would initiate the Request for Proposals, perform peer review on submitted proposals, and provide technical and other assistance to awarded sites. The grant was a five-year grant with three distinct phases and goals to be completed in specified time frames.
The first phase was the needs assessment to determine the gaps in knowledge in the state of Virginia with respect to adoption and the model that would be implemented in the sub sites funded under this grant. The “Adoption Success Model” is a model of adoption practice that was developed following an adoption needs assessment conducted in 2002 as part of the Quality Improvement Center on Adoption (QICA) project based at UMFS in Richmond, Virginia. The needs assessment sought to identify practices associated with adoption success with particular focus on the adoption of children from foster care. The model that emerged had the following components.
The Adoption Success Model consisted of:
- Public/Private collaborative partnerships—combining skills and resources to help children in foster care achieve permanency through adoption,
- Adoption staff specialization—providing high quality services by qualified professionals devoting 100% of their time to adoption and,
- Use of evidence based practice in
- Pre-Placement preparation of families and children
- Assessment of families and children
- Post-Placement support for adoptive families
The second phase was to award three sub grantees (sites) to implement a success model for adoption practice. Those sites were in Charlottesville, Richmond, and the Roanoke area.
The third phase was to disseminate the knowledge and information gained from this project to professionals, academics, stakeholders and other groups so they might learn or replicate similar models.
The grant is currently in the final phase of dissemination. This website is part of the information and knowledge sharing with a large audience about our findings and lessons learned during the course of this grant.
