Our agency (Children’s Services of Virginia) is a treatment foster
care agency, also known as therapeutic foster care. Children with special needs (medical,
emotional, behavioral) are put in TFC as opposed to regular foster care. Severely dysfunctional children and teens
will be placed in group homes or in-patient facilities—TFC is for kids who have
big issues but who can at least function somewhat in the world.
We received 30 hours of training to become TFC certified,
and must do ongoing training several times a year. You and your home must pass some safety
checks, and there are rules about things like bunk beds and trampolines and
what ages of kids can share a room—common sense stuff. You must keep a daily log of medications
given, appointments and visits, behavioral concerns, and anything else of note
that happens.
TFC parents are provided with an extensive support system, including
therapists who can work with the children in your home and several visits per month
from social workers from your agency and from the county workers. Your “trauma-informed” home is considered to
be the primary place where the therapy is taking place, though there can be
outside therapy as well.
It’s supposed to work like this: You tell your agency about your
criteria for accepting a placement, you get a phone call any time night or day,
they (supposedly) tell you everything they know about some kids who need a home
(this is for emergency placements, which most of our calls have been), and you
can say yes or no. Or you can say, “I
need to think about this and talk to my spouse (and pray)” but the longer you
wait to get back to them the larger the chance they’ll have found someone else—young
kids are at a premium. Then they bring
you the kids and you begin the work of helping them adjust to their new
situation.
Foster children must be enrolled in public school, and
younger children can be in preschool or day care--this is a blessing because
you can’t trade-off babysitting with friends unless they fill out 6 pages of
paperwork and have a full background check.
For the first five months we had our kids we didn’t have any help
outside the home, and that was do-able because of our 16 and 22 year-old kids. But it was a bit of a burden on them, and
often I ended up hauling all the kids to appointments that just one needed to
go to, so eventually I caved and let them talk me into preschool for the two
younger kids. But there is no commitment
to take them every day, so that’s really nice.
Though there is a respite care program if needed, you are
encouraged to take the kids on family vacations with you. Our 2 weeks in Idaho this summer was the
highlight of our foster care experience as we were able to show the kids “how
the rest of the world lives” and let them do things they’d never done before
(flying on a plane, climbing mountains, riding horses and 4-wheelers, boating,
etc.) and might never do again.
Financially you should come out slightly ahead doing foster
care. They don’t want you to be way
ahead, since they don’t want people getting into this for the money, and indeed
you must prove that your income meets all your needs before you are
certified. Medicaid covers all medical,
dental, and psychiatric treatment, and each month you get enough to feed,
diaper, drive them around, and buy them things they need. If the children’s behaviors are very
difficult they will increase the payment since you are spending more time working
with the unpleasant side of things (and to try to persuade you to not give up
on the placement!).
On this note, if at any point you feel you just can’t handle
the children any more, you can call the agency and tell them to come and get
them. Even if it’s 2 a.m., it’s OK—they have
24 hour coverage and will come help you handle a situation if needed or remove
the child. However, if you want to stay
on good footing with your agency, you shouldn’t make too many of those phone
calls, and should give them at least 2 weeks to find another home and
transition the children without traumatizing them again.
So that’s at least the basics of how our agency works with
us and the county social services to provide homes for kids in need.
