November is National Adoption Month, and this year’s theme is Empowering Youth: Finding Points of Connection. Throughout November, we will be highlighting our recruiters who work tirelessly to find connections and homes for the children in Vermont waiting for their forever homes.
Meet Macie Klumper
Title: Wendy’s Wonderful Kids Recruiter
Years of Service: 2 years
Macie is a Wendy’s Wonderful Kids Recruiter in the Lund Adoption Department and works with youth in the Brattleboro and Springfield District Offices to find connections, recruit families, and help youth achieve permanence. Macie loves finding connections of all kinds for the youth she works with using a tool called Connect Our Kids.
What does connection mean to you?
As a Wendy’s Wonderful Kids Recruiter I have the honor of helping youth find permanency and connections. Some people think of permanency only in the legal sense. Legal permanency is often adoption or guardianship and something many youth strive for. However, relational permanency is just as important. Relational permanency refers to those long-lasting connections in a person’s life. Who in your life has supported you when times are hard? Who in your life knows and understands your family culture? Who knows your family medical history? Who can give you a ride to soccer practice, take you to lunch, or spend the weekend with you? These people shape us and who we grow up to be. These connections, in addition to birth parents and legal parents, support our identity formation, development, and self-esteem.
What is family finding and what tools do you use to do it?
Family finding refers to an active search for family connections. My family finds turn into giant family trees for youth that extend out on many branches, including aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, second cousins once removed, and more. I can find neighbors and friends as well.
Through family finding, I have successfully found hundreds of people who want to be connected to and supportive of youth who are not living with family. Many of those connections have blossomed into adoptive homes, and even more of those connections have resulted in people who can support a youth as they grow up.
I use a tool called Connect Our Kids to find family members. This advanced technology is free and is designed to help social workers find supportive family connections for vulnerable children. When I became a Social Worker in 2007, this type of work was done with pen and paper. Now, with this technology, we can do so much more.
Can you give us an example of a successful family find?
One example that stands out to me of a successful family find is a youth I met in 2021 who was living in a residential treatment program at the time. During my first meeting with him, I asked the youth who he was connected to. Who do you talk to on the phone? Who visits with you? His response was “I have no one.”
I quickly got to work and found about 40 people who had previously been connected to him or wanted to be connected to him. I spoke to most of those people directly, and this resulted in connecting him with a great-grandmother who talks with him on video calls and sends him birthday cards, a grandfather who sent numerous childhood photos for a photo album, a grandmother and cousin who came to visit with him in person, and a paternal cousin once removed who wanted to pursue placement and permanency. This youth was 16 when we met and had been in the child welfare system since he was 7. His paternal cousin once removed said, “If I only knew about him when he was 7, what a difference that could have made.” This youth wound up not being adopted, but in the end, he is connected to a number of people who love and support him.
Read another example of Macie’s work with Connect Our Kids here.
