Metropolitan Washington Child Welfare Program

The Metropolitan Washington Child Welfare Program finds loving homes for foster children and supports COG's regional colleagues in the public sector. In partnership with local and state child welfare agencies, the program achieves positive outcomes for youth in foster care by bolstering local governments' foster and adoptive parent recruitment and retention initiatives. COG's child welfare committees provide a platform for this work, while also providing local governments in the National Capital Region with technical assistance and a gathering place to discuss and track trends in foster care.

The two keystone programs are: Kids Need Families Like Yours and the Freddie Mac Foundation Wednesday’s Child on NBC 4 news with Barbara Harrison. Please visit these program pages to learn more. Kids Need Families Like Yours is a regional foster parent recruitment campaign. Wednesday's Child finds adoptive homes for foster children.

Child Welfare Directors Committee
There are over 4,000 children in foster care in the metropolitan Washington region. The complexity of issues concerning child placement, provision of services, support to birth families, recruitment of resource parents, and pre- and post- adoption support, requires intensive, coordinated and ongoing oversight. The Child Welfare Directors committee meets quarterly to discuss how their jurisdictions are addressing these issues. The Foster Care Annual Report is released by this committee to the public and media each spring.

Foster Care Committee
Representatives from local government child welfare agencies: resource parent recruiters, trainers, supervisors and managers participate in this committee to coordinate foster and adoptive parent recruitment and retention efforts. The committee seeks and strategizes new cutting-edge approaches that will increase the number of foster or adoptive parents available to care for our region's foster children. This committee and its members monitor the Kids Need Families Like Yours multi-media campaign and its social media outreach on facebook - facebook.com/kidsneedfamilies.  

Wednesday's Child Committee
The Wednesday’s Child committee is comprised of case-carrying adoption recruiters and supervisors in the private and public sector. Our members consult and strategize ways to increase waiting child adoptions, those youth without a permanent home in the metropolitan Washington region’s foster care systems. Striving to strengthen media-based adoption programs, namely the Freddie Mac Foundation Wednesday’s Child program, members of this committee meet monthly to provide feedback on the children who were previously featured on Wednesday’s Child. In addition, this committee also  evaluates and votes on all requests to the Friends of Wednesday’s Child Fund for previously featured Wednesday’s Child children. 

Program Contacts

Kamilah Bunn - (202) 962-3264