North Carolina Foster Parent Recruitment
Basis has teamed up with the North Carolina Collaboratory to launch a pilot program aimed at addressing one of the state’s most urgent child welfare challenges: improving the recruitment and retention of foster and kinship parents.
Why Foster Parent Recruitment and Retention Matters
Shortages are detrimental for children and DSS workers: children are forced to sleep in hotels and Department of Social Services offices. The pilot program uses research to drive urgent, time-sensitive needs. We’re here to empower county leaders to make timely, data-informed decisions that directly benefit the children and families they serve.
Foster and kinship parent shortages have led to children in placement sleeping in DSS offices and hotels. This can be an unimaginable crisis for children, families, and child welfare professionals across our state. North Carolina is confronting this urgent challenge head-on by aligning research with the immediate needs of county departments of social services (DSS). This is more than just a research project — it’s a real-time iterative approach to helping counties make better, faster decisions for the children and families they serve.
The biggest challenge isn’t always a lack of evidence; it’s making sure people have the right information at the right time. Traditional research timelines often can’t keep pace with the urgent decisions child welfare professionals face daily, leaving critical gaps between what we know and what practitioners need. When the problem is moving fast, data needs to move faster.
Statistics
Impact in Action
Our teams are experts in making data work to solve seemingly unworkable problems: recruiting and retaining foster parents for teens and youth with medical or mental health needs, addressing workforce shortages that limit capacity to recruit and support foster families, increasing placement utilization among existing foster parents and increasing kinship placements, and shifting agency norms and culture to better support foster parent engagement.
The pilot also incorporates rapid evidence reviews to provide counties with existing research findings that can inform immediate decision-making, bridging the gap between available knowledge and urgent practice needs. We know our work can be the difference between a safe place for a child to sleep and an overwhelmed system.
County DSS Partners:
4 County DSS Partners actively shaping research priorities and implementation.
Community Organizations:
5+ Community Organizations providing advocacy and community perspectives.
Priority Areas:
4 Priority Areas addressing recruitment, retention, workforce, and cultural change.
Data That Drives Decisions
North Carolina’s Foster Parent Recruitment and Retention Pilot represents a groundbreaking approach to making academic research immediately responsive to child welfare needs. By embedding researchers within county operations and providing rapid evidence reviews, the program creates a direct pipeline from research findings to frontline practice. This model demonstrates how states can quickly turn research into action, ensuring that evidence-based solutions reach the children and families who need them most, when they need them most.