Thousands of children need the warmth and guidance of a family. Children enter foster care because they have been abused or neglected and may feel frightened or rejected and need help dealing with their feelings. Foster parents are needed for all children but especially for teens and children with special medical conditions. Why not consider opening your heart and your home to these special children.
Teens
Older children need stable homes and loving families to help them transition into adulthood. There is a critical need for foster homes for teens. These children often have had a difficult and traumatic history. Many teens in foster care have missed the joys associated with childhood. They face becoming adults with limited skills and no family connections. They need a parent, mentor, advocate and best friend. You may be their last chance to be a son or daughter in a home setting.Special Home Service Providers
Every day, babies are born with serious medical problems and require special care. Some of these infants and children remain in hospitals, even though they are medically ready to be discharged, because their parents are unable or unwilling to care for them. Many of these children have extraordinary medical difficulties, such as chronic lung disease, head injuries, HIV exposure/infection, cerebral palsy and seizures.
These children need love, intensive care, and the attention of exceptionally caring foster parents.
Special Home Service Providers (SHSP) are skilled foster parents. They are recruited to care for medically fragile children in their homes. SHSP foster parents must meet all of the established standards and training requirements of regular foster parents. In addition, SHSP foster parents must meet other requirements:
- Attend a 5-day pre-service training program for Special Home Service Providers.
- Learn care-giving skills specific to the medical needs of the children placed in their home.
- Be certified in infant/child cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and keep their certification current.
- Function as the primary caregiver for the children in their home and limit work outside the home to 10 hours per week or less.
- Team with health professionals and DYFS staff to ensure that the children's health care needs are met.
Providing care to a medically fragile child can be very demanding. Therefore, DYFS provides support services to SHSP foster parents. These services include:
- Special board rates based on the caregiving needs of the child.
- Homemaker, respite or babysitting services.
- Reimbursement for travel expenses related to the child’s medical care.
- Consultation with pediatric nurses.
- Specialized training.
SHSP providers can care for up to two medically fragile children at a time and there should be no more than a total of five children in the home (birth, foster, or adopted).
Fost-Adopt
A Fost-Adopt family not only opens their home to a foster child but also makes a commitment to adopt the child, if the child cannot be reunified with their birth family. The Fost-Adopt program was created to bridge the gap between a child’s initial need for temporary care and a child’s long-term need for a permanent home. The goal of the program is to create placement stability for some of the children who enter the foster care system. As a Fost-Adopt parent you can watch a child flourish in your nurturing family.
Children available for placement in a Fost-Adopt home have been determined to be less likely to return home. The majority of these children are African American. Some of them have special medical needs and some have been exposed to drugs before they were born. Most of the children are under five years old, although older children may be included as part of a sibling group.
