Some info from an outside Adoption Agency - AFFEC

Matching Assistance (from A Family for Every Child) Is Now FREE!

By changing our program to a free program, we hope to better fulfill our mission of finding loving, permanent families for waiting foster children.

Our program is designed to assist current approved home studied families looking to adopt waiting foster children. Our goal is to work alongside families, providing them with one-on-one communication, assurance, and support during the submission and waiting process.

We are here to assist families with learning how to best represent themselves in their family biography, and perform national child searches based on information provided in your home study and family biography.

How to sign up:

Signing up for Matching Assistance is easy! Click this link,

Sign up for MAP and get started on your family profile and biography today! Request that your worker send in your home study, and request activation. You can follow the how-to guide to help you through the process. It is located under the Matching Assistance drop-down menu on the home page.

How to Promote Your Family:

Every adoptive family should have a well-written biography. Your family biography is a way for you to introduce your family to a child's caseworker, and make your family stand out. For Matching Assistance families, a caseworker sees your family biography when you submit on a child through our site, but there is also another way to let caseworkers view it without having to submit on a child: making your biography public. When you grant us permission to make your family biography publicly viewable, it gives your family more exposure to caseworkers. By granting us permission to post your family biography on our site, we can do the following:

• Feature your family on our home pagefor one week as our Web Feature Family. It will just be your family biography, front and center on our home page for one week!
• Allow caseworkers to see your biography when they visit our site, without having to login, making your family biography more accessible to them.
• Feature your family biography in a Feature Family Recruitment Email!

To grant us permission to make your family biography public, simply login to your family profile. On your Family Home Page, at the bottom of box #2, click on the link that says "[OPTIONAL] Grant Permission for Display on the Internet". On the next page, click on the check box, and click "Submit".　

Here are some other ways that you can promote your family through our Matching Assistance Program:

Feature Family Recruitment Email:

Our Feature Family Recruitment email is the best way to promote your family. This email goes out to thousands of caseworkers across the country, and allows caseworkers to send us child profiles that they think would be a good match specifically for your family. They have a very high success rate! By granting us permission to display your family biography on the internet, this allows us to send your biography out in our Feature Family emails.

We also include a link to our Waiting Families page so caseworkers can browse all the families who are publicly displayed on our site. These emails go out every other week to caseworkers.

Child Matching Events:

Signing up for Child Matching Events is another way to promote your family. During our online webinar events families will have private access to many special children, where you can view photos and/or video and hear from people who are actively involved in these children's lives.

Social workers will be on hand to answer questions and give feedback and information about the type of families that would be the best match for these children. Once the event has concluded families will be given the opportunity to submit their home study on children that they feel would be a good fit for their families.

Family Online Matching Event:

As a Matching Assistance family, you can participate in our Online Matching Event. This event is similar to the child matching events, except families are featured to over 50 caseworkers nationwide! During this event, you family biography will be shown, and you will have the opportunity to discuss your home life and what you can offer a foster child. Caseworkers will have the opportunity to gain information about families that might be a good match for children on their caseload.

The benefits of this include instant exposure to over 50 caseworkers, adoption workers and recruiters nationwide. and they will be able to learn about your family...straight from you! These events are open to all Matching Assistance families, and all you need is a computer with internet access to attend! It's an easy, free way to promote your family directly to a child's caseworker!