Host Lorrie Appleton, LCSW:
Welcome to Social Work Talks. I'm your host, Lorrie Appleton. Our podcast will highlight the personal and societal benefits when children in foster care find their forever families. In addition, you'll hear the inspiring stories story of one man who, despite his adversity, was determined to champion a better path forward for thousands of abused, neglected, and vulnerable children in foster care. With the help of hundreds of social workers. In this podcast, you'll learn how to access the powerful stories from the children, their adopted families, and the social workers whose dedication has directly influenced generations. Have a tissue ready. Folks, these stories are very moving. We are so fortunate to welcome our featured speaker, Rita Soronen and President and CEO of the Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption. For more than 30 years, Rita has worked on behalf of abused, neglected, and vulnerable children, providing leadership for local, state and national efforts, working to improve the juvenile justice and child welfare systems while striving to assure safe and permanent homes for North America's children. Leading the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, a national nonprofit public charity since 2001, and the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption Canada. Since 2004, Ms. Soronen worked to find forever families for more than 140,000 waiting children in North America's foster care system. Listeners, I want you to take that number in 140,000 waiting children in North America's foster care systems, incredible. Rita and the foundation have provided a voice for children who deserve to be loved. Rita, I am so happy that you've joined us on this show. Welcome.
Rita Soronen:
Thank you so much. Thank you for having us, Lorrie. I am so excited to be talking with you today.
Host Lorrie Appleton, LCSW:
Great, and likewise. Alright, so listeners, November is National Adoption Month. We celebrate you and all those who join together in the mission of helping children create new and lasting families. So earlier in the podcast, Rita, I spoke about one special man. Can you tell us about Dave Thomas' story and how it lives on today?
Rita Soronen:
Absolutely. And obviously we're called the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. So we take that name and that legacy very seriously. Dave Thomas, for those who may not know also was the founder of the Wendy's Company, Wendy's Hamburgers and Frosties. Right. But he started the foundation in 1992 when he was still CEO of the Wendy's company. And what was already embedded in the Wendy's company, DNA, was giving back, but they wanted to find a way to do it at a much more impactful way rather than perhaps one-offs or sponsorships or something like that. And one would think that since he had built this incredible business that was food-based, that they might deal with something like food insecurity, which is a profound need right in this country. But he was also adopted and he was adopted as an infant, wasn't in foster care, but his adoptive mother passed away when he was very young.
His father was a bit of an itinerant worker, moved from place to place. And so he was frequently raised by his grandmother, Minnie, and moved frequently by the time he was 16 and his dad was going to move again. He said, I don't want to move again. And so he struck out on his own at age 16, he mirrors very much the older youth in foster care who move from place to place, who frequently are living with relatives and who strike out on their own or age out of a foster care system without a family. But what he did is he found comfort in a restaurant. He started working at a restaurant and the rest is history. That was his comfort zone and he wanted to create the best hamburger he said that he ever could. And so he created this incredible Fortune 500 company.
But that notion of giving back because he uniquely understood children who maybe felt lost, felt disconnected from family, we're still striving. No matter how a child is adopted, they're always striving to reclaim their identity, to understand why they are who they are, if they don't have connection to their biological family in particular. So started the Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption in 1992 to focus exclusively on children and youth in foster care who are waiting to be adopted. I have to tell you, he went back at age 50 I believe, and earned his GED because he also felt education was so important. Just a remarkable man. And so we're so proud to carry his name and his legacy with us.
Host Lorrie Appleton, LCSW:
Wow. I have no words. So let's think about this for a second. I want to take this all in. So you talked about his story, then you said he went out on his own at 16. He then built an amazing company, which survives today, and certainly we all enjoy, but he held onto his passion and he did both. So it is truly miraculous and such a testimony to him that he did all of that
Rita Soronen:
And then embedded this notion of giving back throughout the Wendy's system. So he made certain that the franchisees would take on this cause the cause of foster care adoption as one of their causes. And then really made the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, which as you noted is a national nonprofit public charity made the foundation the charity of choice of the Wendy's system. So that includes the corporate office, the franchisees, they don't have to, but they do because they honored Dave's legacy as well. And even some of the suppliers that work with the Wendy's company. So really had that vision of, first, let's just address this issue. In 1992, people weren't really talking a lot about kids in foster care and the system, or if they did, they were responding to negative stories in the press about the child welfare system. So it was such a visionary to take this on and to say, we've got to get the word out in a different way about these children in the system and get them into homes.
Host Lorrie Appleton, LCSW:
Wow. And what did he do in his free time? No, I'm kidding. Just a little humor att. So you know what, let's talk for a minute about the system that he created or the foundation created. The Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption is this brilliant system, which acts as a consortium, compromising donors, partners, and grantors. And a key component of the foundation is the Wendy's Wonderful Kids Program, which we'll kind of talk about that connection too, which employs over 600 social workers, also known as recruiters to link children with potential adoptees. So I'd like to hear more about Wendy's Wonderful Kids.
Rita Soronen:
Sure. It was around 2002, 2003. We had been in place for a decade and we're doing great. We had still for a number of years before Dave passed away, we were able to use his celebrity in public service announcements to go to the halls of Congress and talked to legislators about making sure the best possible policies were in place. But what we couldn't do at the end of the day, if Dave Thomas called and said, Hey, how many kids did you get adopted today? We weren't able to say, and yet our mission was to dramatically increase the adoptions of children out of North America's foster care systems. So we really went underground for about a year and began to reformulate our strategic initiatives. We were doing great awareness campaigns. We were talking about this cause but we weren't really doing, and that's what we needed to do.
We began to look at where is the biggest gap in the child welfare system that perhaps as a grant making organization, as a national nonprofit, we could help fill with resources or some other way. And we began to look at why is it that year over year, more than 20,000 children who've been legally freed for adoption, sit in foster care and then age out, leave the foster care system frankly without the family. We promised them the day that a judge gavels that they're no longer related essentially to their biological family. And so that's where we began our focus. Who are those children most at risk of aging out of care, and what are the existing best practices to get them to move to adoption? And we found there were no evidence-based practices. And in fact, there were a lot of public display kind of tactics, catalogs or websites, which works for some children.
But for that focus population of children who are most likely to age out, children age nine and older children in sibling groups, children with special needs children who've been in care for so long. Like Dave Thomas said, leave me alone. I'm going out. I'll do it on my own. I'm fine. And their executive decision making isn't at that level yet where they understand the long-term value of family. So we pulled together what we saw were existing best practices, which frankly is just good social work. How can you have the time and the energy and the resources to focus on your clients in a way that will make change for them? And we pulled together what we called was a child focused recruitment model. We called it Wendy's Wonderful Kids, because we went back to our Wendy's partners and said, if you jack up your fundraising a little bit, here's what we can do.
Those dollars can come into the foundation. We'll send them back out to the community in which they're raised, and we can begin to support the hiring of these full-time adoption professionals or recruiters to do the following. Carry a caseload of a much smaller caseload than they were typically carrying. So only 12 to 15 children, not 30 to 40 children. And these are children who've been freed for adoption. And then create an aggressive recruitment plan by doing a deep dive into the child's case file to find extended family members to find people already known to this child who if they knew the child was still waiting to be adopted, might step forward and begin that adoption process. Get to know the child regularly, meet frequently with the child so that you understand their journey, their needs, their identity, their wishes, their hopes, their dreams. You can't promise anything, but you can work in partnership with this child, typically older youth, to begin to find the best path for this child.
And so we started with seven pilot sites in 2004. We funded seven recruiters across the nation and said, let's just test it. Let's try it. Let's see if it works. It began to work incredibly well. And the Wendy's team began to fundraise incredibly well for us. And it's not really rocket science. It's working because the caseworkers, the social workers are allowed to do the job that they've been trained to do, and they're not overwhelmed with all of the other aspects of what goes on in the child welfare system simply focused on adoption. Long story short, we grew the program and by 2007, we had a statistically sound number of children who were involved in this process that we could also put in place a rigorous evaluation, an impact evaluation to say, it looks good, it smells good, it feels like it's working, but we've got to know at an evidence-based level that this is really working better than business as usual.
And we found that at the end of a five-year rigorous evaluation that children served by this program, were up to three times more likely to be adopted, and children with specific special needs were more than three times more likely to be adopted. That put us on a trail of now we've got to take it to scale. We've got to continue to grow it because this works for those children. So long story apologies. But it really was this natural evolution of trusting our Wendy's partners to do some fundraising for us, really creating these collaborative public private partnerships because we can't do it alone. And making sure that we can put those professionals who are trained to do this work, that understand this work, understand these children, that we can get them in place and they can do the job that they really want to do.
Host Lorrie Appleton, LCSW:
Wow. And we're going to talk about this a little bit later, but the main thing that I'm hearing so much, but the main thing that I'm hearing is about partnership, and we're going to talk a bit later about us as stakeholders, us as partners. So stay tuned. Rita, would you be willing to tell us a story about a child that has found a forever home through Wendy's? Wonderful kids?
Rita Soronen:
Of course. And there are so many there. So we've found permanency for more than 14,800 children through this program. And each one of those is a success story. But one that comes to mind really quickly is about Kenya. Kenya went into foster care at age six because of abuse and neglect. She sat in foster care for nine years, a 6-year-old sat in foster care for nine years. She was legally freed for adoption. And frequently what we saw in case files is someone would call a child unadoptable for some reason, perhaps because they were acting out because of the manifestation of the trauma, grief and loss that they've experienced may provide the kinds of behaviors that no one is adequately dealing with. Whatever the reason was, she sat in care for nine years. It wasn't until Chelsea, her Wendy's wonderful kids recruiter, had her on her caseload at age 14, 15 and developed this trusting relationship that she hadn't had with anyone else.
And one day, Kenya gave her a folded piece of paper that had been folded over multiple times. She had pulled it out from between her mattresses and she trusted Chelsea enough to give her this piece of paper. And when Chelsea Oma did, it had a list of people that were related to Kenya, people that might, she didn't know. She didn't know these people, but she knew she had this list of people. And so Chelsea began calling these folks and it feels like a miracle, but again, it's just good forensic social work, right? One of those was an aunt of Kenya's who said, I didn't even know she was available for adoption. Had I known a long time ago, I would've stepped forward. And the end of the story is she was adopted not only into a family, but a family that was already connected to her by her aunt. That's the magic of Wendy's. Wonderful kids. When you give a social worker the kind of time that they need to develop a relationship to do the kind of deep dive into a child's journey, they will find an adoptive family for these children. And hopefully 80% of the children who are adopted through Wendy's, wonderful kids are either adopted by extended family members or someone already known to the child, a former foster parent, a teacher, someone like that. And so it's not a strange leap for this child to move into a new home.
Host Lorrie Appleton, LCSW:
And she held her family all that time,
Rita Soronen:
Yes, between her mattress waiting essentially for someone trust enough to share that with. And that was one's wonderful kids.
Host Lorrie Appleton, LCSW:
Children are surrounded by adults in their lives, schools, clergy agencies, coaches, and it's understandable that the children residing in foster care might be guarded and mistrusting of adults. How can we begin the process? And you talked about the story which actually exemplifies this, but how can we begin the process of building trust with them?
Rita Soronen:
It's about valuing a child's voice no matter their age, no matter their journey, no matter what they've experienced, both valuing their voice and understanding those dynamics of grief and loss and trauma that a child has experienced. And when you put those two together, then you'll begin to build that relationship with the child, but also critically important, building a relationship with the agency that holds custody of this child that we're not marching in to say, you've done it all wrong. We're here to save the day. That's not it. We're here to help in partnership and alleviate some of the burden perhaps that might be on social workers' shoulders that have to do court hearings, that have to do home visits, that have to do paperwork, that have to do the whole gamut from prevention or bringing a child into the system to getting them out of the system. The Wendy's wonderful kids workers just focus on that adoption piece, and so can take some of the load off the social workers in the system as well. So it's really about a twofold building of trust and partnerships with the child, of course, but also with the system in which that child resides so that we can do much better on behalf of these children.
Host Lorrie Appleton, LCSW:
And one of the things I think about as a social worker is that time is limited. And so I go through social histories. I've done many, many social histories, and I get the basics. I don't go any further than that. And it would be asking strategic questions now that they've heard you, now that they've heard about the program, asking strategic questions about are they in foster care? Are they living somewhere else? What needs do they have? How many times have they moved? I mean, I think of many questions I could have asked and will ask because of what you're sharing regarding the program.
Rita Soronen:
Yeah. Because the average age of a child served in the Wendy's Wonder Kids Program, right? We're serving, I think it's 7,290 children right now today as we're talking. But the average age of that child is 14. They've moved an average of six times. So that means some have moved 10 or 15 times while they've been in care, 78% have siblings that they need to be adopted with. We can't separate siblings unless it's unsafe for them to be together. So all of those things become part of that strategy of making sure that I'm doing best for this child. But you're right, having the time to do that deeper dive into that trusting relationship and finding out so much more. There may be siblings who are separated that Wendy's wonderful kids recruiters have brought together.
Host Lorrie Appleton, LCSW:
Right? So if there are social workers, meaning you all listeners who want to learn more about how to join the Wendy's wonderful kids team, who do they contact?
Rita Soronen:
Yeah, they're certainly welcome to go to our website, Dave thomas foundation.org is one place, and if you look under all of the tabs and find Wendy's wonderful kids, within that section, you'll find a place where you can go to all of the agencies across the nation in Canada where we support Wendy's wonderful kids recruiters in that agency. And so they can certainly make an outreach to an agency in their state that looks like it's a Wendy's wonderful kids agency because there's still turnover, there's reasons, or we're constantly growing and building. So there may be openings in their state in the agencies that we support. They can certainly also call us at our one 800 ask A-S-K-D-T-F-A if they want a warm voice. But it feels like that best first link in is an agency where it's already known as a Wendy's wonderful kids supportive agency.
Host Lorrie Appleton, LCSW:
What other agency would you want to work for? Right. It's amazing. Rita, thank you so much for being on the show. Do you have any additional thoughts or insights that you want to share?
Rita Soronen:
I think just celebrating, this is National Adoption Month, as you noted, November's National Adoption Month, which is great. But we think of every month as national adoption Month. Saturday is National Adoption Day where we really highlight and celebrate families coming together and getting adopted. This is all about, I think what our founder, Dave Thomas always said, that these children are not someone else's responsibility. They are our responsibility. I'm so grateful to you and your audience for taking on sometimes the most vulnerable in our communities as their responsibility. So I'm so grateful to you. I'm so grateful to your listeners and just know that we're here to stand. We stand ready to help in any way. So always feel free to reach out to the day Thomas Foundation.
Host Lorrie Appleton, LCSW:
Sounds great. Thank you so much. But we cannot close this show without introducing you, the listeners, to some of the many children, families, and recruiters who have become part of the foundation's legacy. Visit the show notes section of our website or YouTube and watch Dave Thomas Foundation's adoption stories. There you'll find the powerful stories from children who found their Forever families, parents who have integrated their new family members into their homes and social workers who have been awarded the Dave Thomas Recruiter of the Year commendation for their exemplary efforts. Also, you'll hear from Dave Thomas. His compassion and vision has inspired a better tomorrow for children and generations to come. Listeners, you do not want to miss these stories. I assure you they will be worth your time to watch. So in closing, we are all stakeholders in promoting a child's opportunity to thrive. After watching this podcast, I hope we will all continue to listen a bit longer, probe a bit deeper, and open our hearts a bit wider for children in search of their forever homes. Thank you for listening.
Producer:
You have been listening to NASW Social Work Talks, a production of the National Association of Social Workers. We encourage you to visit NASW's website for more information about our efforts to enhance the professional growth and development of our members, to create and maintain professional standards and to advance sound social policies. You can learn more at www.social workers.org. And don't forget to subscribe to NASW Social Work Talks wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next episode.