Missouri increased family finding through Extreme Recruitment and 30 Days to Family. Extreme Recruitment is a 12–20-week intensive intervention to identify kin for the hardest to place children by using staff and a private investigator to mine records of the children to identify and locate relatives and kin to be explored for potential placement. Introducing private investigators to the program increased contact with relatives from 23% to 80%. The process involves weekly meetings of the youth’s team and follow-up until the youth achieves permanency. 30 Days to Family in Missouri builds off the success of Extreme Recruitment and focuses on entry into foster care rather than focusing on youth once they are deemed hard to place while in care. This program places equal focus on finding maternal and paternal relatives. The goal is primary placement with kin in addition to locating two-to-three backup kinship placements.

This model law developed by the Hidden Foster Care Coalition was adopted and finalized by ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) on January 6, 2026. This model law sets clear legal guidelines to establish parameters and processes for short term arrangements that enable relatives and fictive kin to play constructive roles in caring for children during investigations when the alternative to these arrangements would be placement of the children into foster care. Model laws provide a legislative framework for states to implement at the state level.