Illinois Department of Children and Family Services
FFY 2011 Annual Progress and Services Report
329
The purpose of the local Recruitment Councils includes the following:
Review localized data from the School Minder Database and integrate council
members’ knowledge of areas needing foster homes.
Review previous and on-going recruitment activities for effectiveness and follow-up
as needed.
Determine future specific activities including assigning responsibilities and setting up
and staffing events.
The Recruitment Councils have core responsibility for determining the location of recruitment
activities, providing direction, assisting with all organizational activities and generally
overseeing the localized recruitment plan to increase the availability of foster homes in their
respective areas.
The Statewide Leadership Team consists of the Cook County and Downstate Foster Home
Licensing Managers and the Cook County and Downstate Local Area Network (LAN)
Managers. They provided the leadership support to begin each of the local Recruitment
Councils, and they continue to provide direction and problem solving with the local councils as
well as reporting in detail to the Department’s executive leadership team.
Each local Recruitment Council utilizes a standard agenda to insure the councils remain
focused on the targeted recruitment needs. The agenda includes:
Review of localized data
Assessment of completed recruitment activities
Determination of future activities and assignment of responsibilities for setting up and
staffing events
Local Recruitment Councils meet no less frequently than quarterly and maintain an ongoing
calendar of events/activities that are scheduled for each site.
Quarterly reports are generated that include a description of activities and specific data from
those efforts. Licensing supervisors identify inquiries from the local Recruitment Council
activities and report on their progress to their respective Licensing Manager.
Cook County
In Cook County there are three Recruitment Councils, one for each of the three Cook Regions.
Each council consists of approximately 10 members who are responsible for various activities
that are set forth during the council meetings. During the past year, Cook County councils
participated in over 30 events geared to generate interest in fostering. These events have lead to
over 150 foster parent inquiries. Although the outcomes from these events do not always
quickly lead to licensed foster homes, the number of homes that are engaged for possible
placements is an ongoing assessment process that sometimes later results in an interested party
becoming licensed. Recently the recruitment efforts in Cook Central Region have slowly
shown some progress in development of Latino recruitment. There have been a number of
events with different Hispanic community agencies and hopefully over the upcoming year we
will see a marked increase in Latino foster homes. The other two sites in Cook North and Cook
South have had a number of events. Inquires are increasing but the families seem to be less
