Evolve Adoption & Family Services

UMOJA MN: EVOLVE provides a variety of in-person and virtual engagement, with specialized programing for varying age groups created to connect Black youth with their culture and community, while empowering and educating adoptive, foster, and kinship families. EVOLVE provides two Black Heritage camps in the Twin Cities Metro Area, that empowers and educates Black fostered, kinship and adopted youth and their families with the Black community and culture in Minnesota. In addition to the camps, we have programs that helps these connections throughout the year. Black Teens in Action gives youth the opportunity to connect with other fostered and adopted Black teens and design a service project that they implement with the Black Community in Minnesota. EVOLVE has a Cultural Responsive Parenting Class that is aimed at caregivers who foster or have adopted black children. This helps them gain knowledge about the nuances of Black culture, racism, hypersexuality and hypermasculinity today. There are also other peer and support groups for caregivers and youth throughout the year.

Adoption Services: EVOLVE's adoption programs provide services to diverse populations through comprehensive training and counseling to ensure that families are fully equipped to meet the needs of a child and achieve permanency. Our services include domestic adoption, international adoption and adoption through foster care with our Minnesota Adoption Permanency Program (MAPP). MAPP is aimed at older children and teens whose parental rights have been terminated and under state guardianship.

Youth Services: EVOLVE youth services programs include; child-specific recruitment (CSR), social-medical histories (SMH), and successful transition into adulthood (STAY). Through SMH, EVOLVE completes interviews with foster providers and birth families, as well as requests health, school and any informative needed records to ultimately write and provide a comprehensive health and birth history for youth who have been in the foster care system. CSR helps children that are needing permanency be part of the process in finding families that will fit and work with their unique authentic self. STAY helps foster and former foster youth find success as they transition out of state care and into self-care. We do this by comprising individual plans through one-on-one meetings or group meetings. These youth are also able to be part of a Youth Council that helps youth aging out of foster care like themselves. EVOLVE provides services to youth between the ages of 14 - 22, who are currently or were formally in foster care. The goal of this service is to assist youth in successfully transitioning to adulthood.