Programs & Initiatives

The Adoption Resources and Education program is a contract with the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families to provide a range of recruitment strategies to identify potential families for children in foster care, raise awareness about the needs of children in foster care and assist with matching children and families. Some of the strategies include general, child-focused, child-specific and targeted recruitment strategies, case mining and family search and engagement. Adoption and Permanency Specialists work with children to help prepare them for permanency and promote best practices in adoption. Children are referred to these services by DCYF.

Tuesday’ Child is an award winning news segment featured on WJAR-Channel 10. Adoption Rhode Island partners with Channel 10 to create and produce features of children waiting to be adopted as well as stories about foster care and adoption. This partnership has provided enormous visibility for children who would otherwise not have a voice. Hundreds of inquiries about a child or the adoption process occur because of the partnership. The segment airs on Tuesdays during noon and 5:30 shows.

Wendy’s Wonderful Kids is a signature program of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. It is the only evidenced-based model of adoption recruitment in the country.

Adoption Rhode Island’s WWK Recruiters implement this evidenced-based, child-focused recruitment model that is proven to be up to three times more effective at serving children who have been in foster care the longest, including teenagers, sibling groups and children with special needs. In part, due to our staffs’ successful implementation and fidelity to this model, Adoption Rhode Island has more than tripled the size of the RI WWK chapter. For more information about the model click here.

The Extreme Family Finding program is an innovative and promising model that pairs an experienced adoption social worker with a private investigator to identify extended family members for children and youth in foster care. This program is very prescriptive in it’s approach and when implemented to fidelity, is very successful. In less than a year after launching the program, the EFF team has helped to identify hundreds of lost and unknown relatives and other supportive adults for high- need children in the Rhode Island foster care system. Originally funded through the Children’s Bureau as a pilot program, Adoption Rhode Island’s program was one of several programs to offer this model throughout the country. Because of the success, the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families ( RI DCYF) has continued to fund the program and remains a strong and critical partner in achieving the positive outcomes. All referrals for this program come from RI DCYF.

The Center for Advanced Practice is a knowledge hub for health, education, and social service professionals with the goal to bring research based solutions to address the complex needs of foster and adopted children, youth and families in today’s world. By launching the Center for Advanced Practice, we create influence and impact for improving system-wide delivery of evidenced based and promising practices to ensure high-quality and high impact results for children and families. We serve as a link to research infrastructure, policy development and practice implementation. We will be a resource to professionals who are looking to gain knowledge and improve their practice. We offer schools, agencies, medical practices and other organizations consultation, training and expert opinions. We serve as partner to universities interested in furthering research in areas that impact outcomes for children, youth and families. We incubate best practice solutions, provide educational trainings, offer workshops, professional consultation, information dissemination and seek to collaborate to promote the well-being of children.

implementation. We will be a resource to professionals who are looking to gain knowledge and improve their practice. We offer schools, agencies, medical practices and other organizations consultation, training and expert opinions. We serve as partner to universities interested in furthering research in areas that impact outcomes for children, youth and families. We incubate best practice solutions, provide educational trainings, offer workshops, professional consultation, information dissemination and seek to collaborate to promote the well-being of children.