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Volunteer Update: check out new volunteer opportunities and get an update on past projects.
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May is National Foster Care Month!
The Family Care Network began in 1987 as a foster family agency with the sole purpose of creating family-based treatment programs as an alternative to group home or institutional care for children and youth. In the last 20+ years, the agency has grown to serve over 670 foster children annually, and the agency has taken a leading role in developing and implementing therapeutic foster care services to combat the life altering circumstances that follow a child into the system. The Family Care Network understands the importance of providing foster children stable, nurturing and loving homes until they can be safely reunify with their biological family or transitioned to another more permanent placement. And the agency is committed to helping every foster child/youth secure permanency, mindful that foster care should be a short-term transition to a more long-term solution.
The agency currently operates five programs within its Therapeutic Foster Care Services division:
- Therapeutic Foster Care
- Emergency Shelter Care
- Intensive Therapeutic Foster Care
- Wraparound Foster Care (WFC)
- Crisis-Stabilization Foster Care (CFC)
All of these programs are designed to be solution-focused, strength-based, needs-driven, community-centered and culturally competent, utilizing “Best Practices” and “Wraparound” elements. And the agency’s foster parents are specially trained to provide the best possible care for children/youth with high needs. The agency’s foster care programs not only assist the children/youth being served, but they are also designed to continually provide foster parents with excellent support, compensation, training and agency accountability.
Foster Care Facts:
- According to CACFS, as of July 1, 2007 there were 650 children placed in foster care in Santa Barbara County and 461 placed in San Luis Obispo County—that’s a 16% increase in foster care placements from last year.
- The Family Care Network serves, on average, over 125 foster placements in both Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties on a monthly basis.
- Currently, the agency has 29 certified foster homes in Santa Barbara County and 18 in San Luis Obispo County; however, neither county has enough homes to serve the ever increasing rise of children/youth needing therapeutic foster care.
- The agency is currently in need of more therapeutic foster homes, especially in Santa Barbara County. Since the beginning of 2008, the agency has turned away almost 25 children needing therapeutic foster care due to the lack of certified foster homes in the area.
Are you interested in becoming a Therapeutic Foster Parent?
The following is a list of some of the benefits foster parents with the Family Care Network can expect:
- The agency uses a “team-based”, fully participatory service delivery model.
- You will work closely and frequently with agency social workers to ensure yours and the child’s needs are met.
- Foster parents are trained to be “Professional Parents” who play a critical role in the health and success of our foster children.
- Foster parents are given “voice, choice and preference” throughout their foster parenting experience.
- Foster parents receive excellent tax-exempt monetary compensation.
- We have clinically trained staff to assist you and your foster child/youth 24/7.
- The agency provides a wide range of services to meet foster children’s needs, such as: tutoring, mentoring, respite care, counseling services, behavioral support staff and much more.
For more information on becoming a foster parent please contact Janaan Miles by either email or by calling (805) 781-3535.
The Family Care Network is a private, nonprofit children and families services provider. Established in 1987 for the purpose of creating family-based treatment programs as an alternative to group home or institutional care for children and youth, the agency now operates multiple, accredited programs designed to strengthen and preserve families and individuals.
- In the agency’s 20+ year history, we have grown to serve over 2,000 children, youth and families annually in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties.
- Programs are delivered in partnership with public and private agencies, and the community.
- The Family Care Network provides 17 distinct programs within five service divisions:
- Therapeutic Foster Care;
- Family Support Services;
- Transitional Housing Services;
- School-Based Mental Health and Delinquency Prevention Services; and
- Community-Linked Services.
- All agency programs are based on Best Practices, Wraparound Principles and evidence-based or promising practices.
- The Family Care Network values integrity, accountability, program fidelity and outcome-based services, and is accredited by the California Alliance of Child & Family Services.
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