A nonprofit organization already assisting foster children in and around Bulloch County could soon go an extra mile.
Since 2010, Fostering Families Bulloch has worked locally to support foster parents, foster children, and Division of Family and Children Services caseworkers through various service projects, carried out entirely by community volunteers.
Now, group founder Chris Yaughn wants to do more.
Yaughn recently announced a grassroots fundraising effort to facilitate a full- or part-time employee with Fostering Families that would actively seek permanent homes for children whose needs are not being met by the state’s adoption system.
In an email sent to organization supporters, and in a presentation to the Rotary Club of Statesboro, Yaughn revealed an idea to raise $30,000 for what would be Bulloch County’s first and only child-focused adoption recruiter.
“At any give time in Georgia, there are about 1,600 children who are post-TPR (Termination of Parental Right), which means they are available for adoption,” Yaughn said. “Out of that 1,600, most have an adoptive parent — a foster family or family member — lined up. But there are about 250 kids that do not have a known permanent outcome, meaning there is no idea who their permanent adoptive parent could be. For that 250, there is no real plan.”
Yaughn said the children that tend to fall through system gaps are those who are “older (nearing 18 years old), have social or medical development issues or are members of a large sibling group — foster families rarely have resources to take in an entire group of siblings.”
For those children, only short-term solutions are in place. 
“The state’s effort to bring in adoptive families is a very broad effort, and tends to bring-in families who are looking for younger, individual children. It doesn’t do a very good job of serving the needs of the 250 kids (at any given time) left over,” he said. “But, there is an approach to adoption recruitment called child-focused adoption, which kind of turns the tables on what the state typically does.”
“Instead of going out, finding families, and bringing them in to show them kids, a child-focused adoption recruiter gets to know the kids, and then goes into the world to find a family for them,” Yaughn said.
A foster parent himself, Yaughn believes the position would create a useful community-sponsored compliment to the state system already in place.
“Obviously, this way of doing things is a little more labor intensive and not something the state can always do,” he said. “Our notion is to let the state do what it does, and as a community, try to raise a little money right here in Bulloch County to hire a child-focused recruiter to work with children.”
Currently, of the estimated 250 children an adoption recruiter could aim to help, 25 live in the Bulloch County DFCS region, Yaughn said.
The recruiter, among other duties, would follow leads and research to identify individuals/families that are interested in adoption and are more apt to take in the children that are most often left out.
“If we could raise enough money to have someone work with kids, and to go out and find a forever home for them, how great would that be?” he said. “Fostering Families Bulloch helps out now, but not on that scale. You just can’t overstate the magnitude of finding a forever home for kids.”
In his email, Yaughn told supporters that 30 families, committing $1,000 each, could make his dream a reality. Within days, 13 were on board.
“Who knows? Maybe we’ll make it, maybe we won’t,” he said. “But if we don’t, it won’t be for a lack of trying.”
Yaughn has already identified his primary candidate for the job.
“I run Fostering Families Bulloch and a countertop business, but, honestly, my heart is more in Fostering Families Bulloch,” he said. “I would love for that position to be me. I want to be the one charged with the responsibility of finding permanent homes for the children we know and work with.”
According to Yaughn, a key component to the position would be “resolving barriers to adoption that good homes may, and often do, have.”
It is work, through efforts already being done by Fostering Families, that is not unfamiliar to him.
“We just try to connect families and children with any and all items they need or can use,” he said. “We have done things ranging from providing a clarinet to a little girl in a group home, to building a four-bedroom, two-bath house, so we could keep a six-child sibling group together as a family, living with an aunt, rather than going into the foster care system.”

Jeff Harrison may be reached at (912) 489-9454.