Let It Be Us Application Brief

2026-10-19

Purpose

A private, professional platform that helps adoption recruiters identify potential matches between children and adoptive families across state boundaries through intelligent, AI-assisted matching. It’s designed to surface possibilities that professionals might otherwise miss across agency and state boundaries, while keeping human judgment at the center of every placement decision. The goal is also to save recruiters time on manual matching so they can handle more cases. Quality and usefulness matter more than suggestion volume.

Who uses it

• Recruiters: staff at participating agencies who manage child and family profiles, review released match suggestions, and provide feedback. They see their organization’s records and relevant suggestions, not every agency’s full roster.
• Admin: Let It Be Us staff who approve organizations for access, generate and review AI match suggestions, and approve which suggestions reach recruiters. They oversee participating organizations and matching quality. Let It Be Us also participates as the Illinois agency; its agency work is distinct from central platform oversight.
• Children and adoptive families have no accounts. Their profiles are managed by professionals. Prospective families use public educational resources and state-specific referrals to licensing or adoption-listing partners.

How it works

1. Register and approve an organization. An organization creates an account and moves through pending review, prerequisites complete, then Admin approved and access granted. It cannot access the service before prerequisites are complete and the Admin approves it. Onboarding includes staff access, approved data-sharing permissions, the data template, and training.
2. Add and maintain profiles. Import structured child and family data through validated CSVs, with basic record updates. Every profile has a required, stable, non-identifying reference ID. The agency keeps the mapping to the actual person in its own system and updates availability when circumstances change.
3. Generate match suggestions. AI compares eligible profiles across participating organizations to suggest multiple possible child–family matches. Alongside periodic matching, an Admin can use a button to generate more suggestions. Matching considers children’s needs and family suitability; permitted fields and matching rules remain open decisions.
4. Review before release. The Admin sees all match suggestions in a list, reviews them, and approves or rejects them. Only approved suggestions are released to the relevant recruiters.
5. Review and connect. Recruiters see a combined badge for approved-match and message activity in their inbox, review permitted counterpart information, choose whether to pursue or decline, and provide feedback. Initial outreach between recruiters takes place inside the platform, supported by an email prompting them to return to the platform. A suggestion does not determine a placement.

Initial scope

The first version centers on AI-generated match suggestions for a small pilot, with Admin approval of participating organizations and match suggestions. Its supporting capabilities are:

• Recruiter workspace: organization-scoped access; child and family rosters; CSV validation; record and availability updates; an inbox with a combined badge for approved-match and message activity; pursue/decline actions and feedback; initial outreach within the platform, supported by email prompts to return.
• Admin workspace: organization approval; a button to generate more match suggestions; a list of all suggestions to review and approve or reject; oversight of profile availability, suggestion quality, and recruiter feedback.
• Public information and training: explain the program, educate prospective families, route visitors to their state’s partner or licensing resources, and help recruiters use the platform.

Boundaries

The baseline excludes names, exact birth dates, photos, addresses, family contact details, and licensing identifiers. Free text remains unresolved. Each agency retains the mapping from reference IDs to people.

Agencies remain responsible for source-record accuracy, licensing checks, and eligibility changes. Before real data is used, the product needs approved agreements and consent arrangements, permitted-field rules, organization-level access controls, security and audit requirements, and retention/withdrawal procedures. A registration checkbox alone does not resolve those obligations.

Open decisions

• Pilot and access: Choose the first participating organizations, recruiter permissions, and who manages staff access and organization settings.
• Data and compliance: Agree the profile fields, use of free text, consent/legal basis, and information shown or shared. Confirm whether partners require a SOC 2 attestation report and whether HIPAA applies. Removing names alone does not establish HIPAA de-identification or resolve other privacy, security, and contractual obligations.
• Matching: Define hard constraints, preferences, quality checks, and human review responsibilities.
• Data maintenance: Agree the source of truth, a named owner for updates, and how imports, changes, withdrawals, and reconciliation or syncing work. Agencies may continue using existing systems, so duplicate entry and stale records remain risks.
• Follow-through and reporting: Agree how recruiters coordinate next steps after initial outreach and what referral or permanency outcomes need to be tracked.

Product discussion source

Terminology

• Adoption Listing Service (ALS): the state’s service for helping find adoptive families for children referred for adoption recruitment. An agency can operate that service under contract: Let It Be Us fills this role in Illinois. Other agencies may refer children to the ALS; the ALS does not thereby take over every aspect of the case.
• Agency: an organization providing child-welfare or adoption services. Some agencies manage children’s cases or support families; the participating agency in this product operates the Adoption Listing Service. Exact legal responsibilities and licensing arrangements need confirmation for each jurisdiction.
• Social worker or caseworker: an individual working with children or families, usually within an agency. Recruiter is the platform’s user term for staff at the participating ALS organization who manage child and family profiles and assess potential matches. These are not separate sides of the product.
• Licensed family: a household with foster-care licensing, not an agency. Licensing alone does not establish eligibility for a particular adoption; the partner checks status and suitability. “Licensed family agency” should not be treated as a separate user type.