A significant part of KVC’s work is matching children in foster care with loving adoptive families. While we matched nearly 500 children with adoptive families last year — that’s more than 1 adoption every day! — the needs remain great. We are always looking for more families that can love and support children who have been removed from their homes due to abuse, neglect or other challenges, and can’t go back.

Take a look at some of the creative, innovative ways we are working to increase adoptions of children and teens in foster care:

New Adoption Website

We just launched a brand new adoption website! Check it out at http://adoption.kvc.org. The new site:

• Prominently features real children front and center on the homepage, so visitors immediately see the faces and bios of children looking for a family
• Includes videos of children expressing their unique personalities and explaining what they want in a family – see one example here
• Integrates well with social media sites like Facebook by providing one-click sharing options

Let us know via Facebook what you think of our new adoption website!

Social Media and Videos

As mentioned above, we are increasing the use of technology to share these children with adoptive families. We’ve equipped our adoption team with iPhones and iPads for recording short videos of children when they meet with them. We then release the videos on YouTube and Facebook. Here’s one example:

The response to these child videos on Facebook has been astounding! Children are often their own best advocates, and people are especially willing to click “share” on the video of a child who simply wants a family and a home. We continue to measure the response, and are hoping that increased social media engagement surrounding adoption leads to more inquiries and more children in forever families.

Find our teams involved with adoption on social media at:

• Facebook: KVC Kansas, KVC Nebraska, KVC West Virginia and KVC Health Systems
• Twitter
• Instagram
• YouTube
• LinkedIn

Simply following us on these social networks and sharing child videos/profiles with your unique sphere of influence greatly increases the chances that these children will find families. By educating your family and friends about the need and advocating for specific children, you become a part of the KVC adoption recruitment and marketing team! So simple — yet so powerful.

Interactive Adoption Center

A third way that KVC is innovating in the adoption field is by building a home base for these services. Our new Institute for Practice Improvement and Innovations in Child and Family Services — currently under construction in Olathe, Kan. in the greater Kansas City area — will include a high-tech Interactive Adoption Center that uses video recording and conferencing capabilities, social media and other technology to help match thousands more children in foster care with loving forever families. Expansion of teleconferencing and other digital communication capabilities will broaden the community of potential adoptive families and support communication when distance presents an initial barrier.

These are just a few of the ways we are innovating to help match more children with “forever families!” Let us know what ideas you have to increase adoptions.