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Services
MARE serves children and teens in the Massachusetts foster care system who are not able to be reunited with their birth families and need permanent adoptive homes. We provide vital services to these children by working with the Commonwealth’s Department of Children & Families (DCF) and its contracted agencies to register each child that cannot be reunited with his or her birth family and then recruiting families that meet an individual child’s very specific needs.
MARE has two programming departments, Child Services and Family Support Services. Child Services engages in child-specific recruitment, finding an adoptive family to match a particular child’s needs. Family Support Services advises families interested in adoption and provides assistance to those going through the process. MARE’s model uses these complementary programs to cast as wide a net as possible to find potential adoptive families and then match them with a specific child whose needs they meet.
CHILD SERVICES
MARE’s Child Services Team engages in child-specific recruitment of families by developing an individual recruitment plan around the needs and strengths of each child with the goal of finding the right family to adopt them.
Tools used in child-specific recruitment:
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CHILD REGISTRATION AND MATCHING
Child Services Coordinators (CSCs) register waiting children in collaboration with their social workers, and then work to match them with families that have registered with our organization. CSCs also work with national databases to promote specific children and search for out-of-state families that may be a match.
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CHILD SPECIFIC MEDIA CAMPAIGNS
Individual waiting children or sibling groups are featured in media campaigns using a strengths-based model to appeal to potential adoptive parents for the featured child(ren) and to promote adoption from foster care and MARE to a wide audience. Examples include Sunday’s Child in The Boston Sunday Globe/ Boston.com, and Wednesday’s Child on WBZ-TV 4.
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ADOPTION MEET AND GREETS/MATCHING EVENTS
A Meet and Greet is an interactive event that brings together waiting children, their social workers, and prospective adoptive families in a low-pressure atmosphere. Meet and Greets are MARE’s most successful recruitment tool. MARE also hosts matching events where prospective families can have in-depth conversations with social workers about waiting children on their caseloads.
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HEART GALLERY PORTRAIT EXHIBIT
The Heart Gallery is a photography display featuring waiting children. It is MARE’s most forward-facing recruitment tool as it can be showcased in a multitude of public spaces in any area of the state. MARE is moving to a digital format to expand the number of galleries and provide an interactive experience that will provide a mechanism for real-time inquiries from prospective adoptive families.
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MARE WEB SERVICES
MARE’s extensive web services allow prospective adoptive families to view photos, profiles, and videos of waiting children from all over the state. Families can also search MARE’s database to find and inquire about children who might be a good fit for their family.
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INTENSIVE RECUIRMENT SERVICES
MARE offers the following specialized recruitment programs to address the needs of youth who wait the longest:
Wendy’s Wonderful Kids, a signature program of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. This model is up to three times more effective at serving children who have been in foster care the longest, including older youth, sibling groups and children with special needs. MARE currently has two Wendy’s Wonderful Kids recruiters, who work with smaller caseloads, ensuring that they can provide these children with the attention, resources and support they need and find the adoptive families they deserve.
Specialized Recruitment Coordination focuses on identifying families for children with complex medical and developmental needs in the Central and Western regions of the state.
Weekend Family Connections is program that bridges the gap between waiting youth and supportive caring adults. MARE, in partnership with Cambridge Family and Children's Service and DCF, pairs youth in foster care who are waiting for adoption with host families who are committed to actively incorporating the youth into their community and family life.
FAMILY SUPPORT SERVICES
Families come to MARE by inquiring about adoption in general or about a specific child for whom MARE is recruiting. The Family Support Services department provides support to families who want to learn about adoption from foster care.
MARE assists and supports families by:
- Providing individualized follow-up with all families who inquire about adoption from foster care, personal consultation via phone to those who desire it, and referrals for families to DCF and other agencies in their area for adoption licensure;
- Providing education on topics of interest to prospective families via webinars, panels, and newsletters;
- Hosting networking events for families at varying stages in the adoption process;
- Registering the home studies of licensed Massachusetts families and supporting the efforts by social workers to identify children and families across the state as potential matches;
- Connecting families with providers of post-placement and post-adoption services;
- Working with experienced adoptive families to help spread the word about adoption from foster care whether in their own communities or through media; and
- Pairing experienced mentor families with families in process for support and mentorship through the Friend of the Family Program.
