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Foster Services
Every year, about 170,000 foster families care for over a half million children whose parents are not currently able, due to abuse or neglect, to take care of them safely. These resource families and the social workers, volunteers, educators and professionals who support them, quietly and efficiently take on one of the biggest challenges facing many children with disabilities. Specialized foster homes, sometimes called therapeutic foster homes, or professional foster homes, provide short or long-term care for children with disabilities. The children cared for in specialized foster homes often have diagnosis of serious emotional disturbance, complex medical needs, or developmental disabilities. They require more intensive and specialized services and supports than are available through typical foster care programs. Foster parents receive specialized training and support services. Their relationship includes elements of partnership in planning for the child, and a great deal of responsibility in carrying out individualized treatment plans. Usually only one or two special needs children are placed in a foster home at a time. Download information about foster care payment rates from the Casey National Center for Resource Family Support. Maryland provider programs recruit, train and support foster families to provide necessary care and treatment to children and youth with disabilities. Working jointly as a team, foster parents, social workers, mental health professionals, child welfare workers from the Maryland Department of Human Resources, develop and provide intensive treatment and determine the permanency plans, often with the natural parents or relatives. Every jurisdiction in the country has experienced a shortage of foster homes, and estimates of the number of homes needed across the country range into the millions. Most agencies are perpetually recruiting new foster parents at the same time that they seek to retain the ones they have. Each state has different rules, regulations and procedures or guidelines to follow to become a foster provider. Maryland requires that the foster parents be licensed by the providing agency, or the local department of Social Services within Maryland Department of Human Resources (DHR). Basic requirements for licensure usually include:
Maryland Resources
The Arc Of Baltimore Provide foster care services to children throughout the Baltimore area. This included infants, children, teenagers and young adults. This program provides Specialized Foster Care, which provides ongoing case management and support to children with disabilities, and Treatment Foster Care, which provides intensive, time-limited therapeutic services in a community-based family setting to youngsters who have both developmental disabilities and serious emotional disturbances. Arc of the Northern Chesapeake Region Family Partnership Program Serves Harford and Cecil Counties. The Arc recruits and trains treatment foster parents. In the therapeutic setting of the foster home, children, ages 0-21, learn skills and behaviors that promote healing and improve family relationships. Treatment foster parents work in collaboration with the treatment team and biological family to help children with special needs return to their family, achieve independence, or become adopted. Kennedy Krieger's Therapeutic Foster Care, Adoption and Respite Program Telephone: (443) 923-3800 This program offers a continuum of services for children with special needs who need stable, loving homes but cannot live with their own biological families. Children from all over Maryland who have developmental disabilities, emotional disturbances and medically fragile conditions are placed with loving families in the Baltimore metropolitan region, who receive intensive support, consultation and training from the developmental pediatric experts at Kennedy Krieger. Maryland Mentor Telephone: 410-944-5055 Maryland Mentor is a private company with a public trust. Maryland Mentor provides individualized, community based care for children and adolescents with significant, and often multiple, disabilities, in all counties in Central, Southern, and Eastern Regions. 
National Resources
Foster Family-Based Treatment Association Foster Parent Community Foster Kids Club A website for foster children, containing many contributions from foster children, and creating opportunities for foster kids to communicate with each other. Foster Club for Grownups Who Care A website for foster parents, containing informative resources on many aspects of foster care, news updates, information on issues such as taxes, adopting a foster child, links to other websites providing statistics and research (such as a Time Magazine article, or books about foster care). National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities This is an excellent resource with information on specific disabilities, and capacity to help parents or others locate resources. State resource sheets, and links to national organizations. Publications include fact sheets, issue papers, material on educational rights. Research and Training Center on Family Support and Children's Mental Health The website of a center which focuses on enabling families of children with serious mental health problems to advocate for themselves and their children. Discussion of issues, data trends, reports of conference. Publications include some on therapeutic foster care. National Resource Center for Special Needs Adoptions: Spaulding for Children Website reflects the multi-faceted organization, which provides training, information, and support for foster and adoptive parents, and works to place the children who wait longest for adoption. Contains material on specialized foster care, as well as information for foster parents who want to adopt. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth, and Families, Children's Bureau A major source of information and quite easy to use. It contains links to the AFCARS data reporting system, as well as fact sheets reporting recent statistics on all aspects of foster care. Laws and policies are described. Children's Bureau program descriptions and funding announcements are on this site. Many government publications can be downloaded. |
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