Lund’s adoption team and the Vermont Department for Children and Families have been awarded the 2019 Drenda Lakin Memorial Award from Voice for Adoption, a national adoption advocacy organization. This award is given to non-profits, organizations or individuals in recognition of their efforts to provide valuable adoptive family support after adoptions are finalized.
Lund and DCF were nominated to honor the close working partnership that was established to increase permanency and increase provision of post adoption services in the State of Vermont. This private-public partnership has changed the way in which Vermont finds adoptive homes for children who are waiting in the system and how families who have finalized adoptions are supported.
The nomination highlighted two successful partnerships between Lund and DCF.
“Nineteen years ago, the Vermont Department for Children and Families (DCF) and Lund established the public-private partnership, Project Family. A partnership that appears organizationally seamless, DCF and Lund established Project Family to find adoptive families for waiting children. Project Family was originally funded by an Adoption Opportunity Grant with a goal of achieving permanency for 90 children. The Project found early success, and with that, came an expansion of their role into recruitment. Their role continued to expand assuming responsibility for facilitating finalizations of all Vermont child welfare adoptions.
From that original Adoption Opportunity Grant to level funding as a line item in the State of Vermont budget, Project Family has grown to be a force in the delivery of adoption services in the State of Vermont. The public-private partnership has changed the way the whole system view adoption so that there is now a systemic belief that there is a family for every child.”
“DCF and Lund partnered together on the National Quality Improvement Center for Adoption/Guardianship Support and Preservation. Vermont was one of only eight sites selected to participate in this national initiative. Working in close partnership through this initiative, these two agencies developed and disseminated a survey to all families who had an open adoption subsidy in Vermont. The agencies worked tirelessly to find updated contact for all the families and then reached out to families multiple ways. They ultimately sent surveys out to 1,470 families across Vermont and had over a 50% response rate. DCF and Lund took the results from these surveys to create data reports for the different regions in the state. They brought together all of the community service providers in each region who might work with an adoptive child and/or family (i.e. schools, community mental health, police departments) and discussed the results from the surveys to determine how they could change service provisions in that area to better support children and families. DCF and Lund held these meetings throughout the state, improving service delivery in each area. Even though this grant has ended, DCF and Lund have committed to send out periodic surveys to all adoptive families so that they can stay in close contact with them and obtain information that will help to improve service delivery. They have also developed a process to reach out to families with information during different developmental stages that might result in increased needs for services -i.e. the age children enter kindergarten, the age children enter middle school.”
Working together, DCF and Lund have found forever families for 2,910 children/young people and changed the way post adoption support is initiated and delivered in the state.
Congratulations to Lund’s adoption team and our hard working partners at the Vermont Department for Children and Families.
Both proud of and grateful for Lund’s committed & thorough Adoption Services staff!