The foster care system is meant to be a safety net for children when they are not properly cared for. However, removing children from their families and placing them in a new environment is inherently traumatic.
Children need help unpacking their emotions regarding the reason for the removal, the sense of loss as they separate from their family, and what is coming up as they transition to new environments.
Consider a child who has grown up in a neglectful environment at no fault of their own. This child may have been shuffled between various foster or group homes and changed neighborhoods several times, lacking the necessary support system.
As a result, they have lost trust in adults, feel isolated, struggle with focusing in school, and have begun to act out as an expression of their disappointment and anger. They find themselves heading towards being a legal adult and yet unequipped with the social, emotional, and independent skills that prepare youth for success in adulthood.
After being removed from multiple foster homes that were unable to meet their needs, this child is experimenting with substance use and is on the brink of entering juvenile detention. Who is there to support these youth who are missing the crucial resources they require?
This is where treatment foster care, also known as therapeutic foster care, comes in. This specialized service is designed for youth in these situations, aiming to break the cycle of trauma.
Cayuga Centers’ Treatment Family Foster Care (TFFC) program is a research-based, multi-tiered approach focused on rebuilding family connections. The program serves children and teens who require significant support because of trauma in their homes or communities. Each youth is carefully matched with foster parents, and a tailored treatment plan is developed to meet their unique needs.
What does the support look like for a youth in Treatment Family Foster Care?
Cayuga Centers’ treatment model includes a dedicated team of professionals that surround the youth, offering comprehensive support in various areas, including living environment, mental health, family relationships, community resources, and case management.
This coordinated approach minimizes miscommunication and delays and allows for one highly-trained team—including clinicians, case managers, skills trainers, reunification specialists, and foster parents— to effectively manage all aspects of care.
Therapy services from foster care clinicians
One of the most important aspects of healing youth in care is the therapy provided by clinicians on the treatment foster care team.
“The clinician leads the team in a clinical direction,” explains Peggy Buckley, a Cayuga Centers’ TFFC program clinician in Pittsburgh, PA. “We provide individual therapy and family therapy with the foster family or the biological family.”
Therapy doesn’t always involve sitting in an office chair. Sometimes, it means flying a kite, walking in the park, or dancing in the car with a youth while they talk through their emotions.
Building skills at home and in the youth’s community
Skills Trainers are also critical members of the treatment team, helping youth integrate into their communities.
“Skills sessions typically look like are extensions of therapy sessions,” Peggy shares. “They might be working on building and maintaining [emotion] regulation strategies. They might [help youth with] exploring or solving identity. They may take youth to engage in new activities like a baseball game if they’ve never been to a baseball game or going and eating sushi for the first time – whatever the youth might be interested in. They also help youth develop tangible skills.”
These skills include getting a social security card, signing up for a library card, obtaining an I.D., or working on job applications, resumes, or job skills.
Management of all care services
Behavioral Case Planners help facilitate the logistics of care. They ensure the youth has a safe transition into their new certified foster home. They oversee the completion of placement paperwork and schedule necessary appointments with care providers or the courts. Collaborating with recruiters and licensors, they ensure treatment foster homes continue to meet all foster parent home requirements.
Behavioral Case Planners also oversee the youth’s behavioral interventions and treatment activities. They work towards reunification, if possible, by building positive relationships and facilitating communication between the foster care home and the youth’s biological parents.
The role of a Behavioral Case Planner changes daily. It includes attending family court hearings and school meetings. It can also mean providing transportation or responding to emergencies.
Trauma-informed foster parent training
Cayuga Centers views foster parents as an integral part of the treatment team that supports the youth while they are in care. Therapeutic foster parents receive specialized trauma-informed training and wraparound services to ensure a stable environment until a permanent solution is found.
Cayuga Centers’ staff help treatment foster parents by managing all case planning and therapy services. They also promote skill-building to help young people succeed in their communities.
In some cases, a person with a biological or familiar relationship with the youth steps up to become the youth’s foster parent. This type of care is called kinship foster care and can be beneficial in keeping extended families connected.
Kinship placements include not only aunts, uncles, and grandparents, but sometimes can include teachers or police officers who know the youth – also known as “fictive kin“.
How does TFFC help families?
Supporting youth with a treatment team and placing them in trauma-informed foster homes gives children and their families who have gone through the system another opportunity to get back on their feet and work toward reunification.
TFFC prioritizes keeping families together
Most removals are intended to be temporary, and reunification is the goal. Peggy recalls the experience of a family in care. The family includes a mother and her two children, a 13-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl.
The boy had been placed in a kinship home with his maternal aunt and uncle due to his biological mother’s mental health concerns, including her struggle with substance use disorder.
The treatment team was the main communication channel between the kinship caregivers, the mother, and the son. They helped the mother seek treatment and provided therapy to the child.
Family therapy sessions didn’t always go as planned, and the mother and son struggled with rebuilding their relationship. The 13-year-old was resistant to therapy at first. However, he continued to engage and eventually opened up in therapy.
“What really stuck with me with this family was the progress that the mother was able to make.” Peggy shares. “When she entered our program, she didn’t want to work with the team. She would call and yell at the team frequently when situations didn’t go the way that she wished. She didn’t take a lot of accountability. But then she started engaging in her own services. She engaged in family therapy, and when her son was about to return to her, she called every single member of the team and apologized for how she acted at the beginning of the case. She thanked the team and told each member what she learned from them. I think that insightfulness from her and watching how she was in the beginning, but then where she ended up at the end of her journey with Cayuga Centers, is why it’s worthwhile to become a clinician.”
TFFC supports youth aging out of foster care
In Cayuga Centers’ New York City program, a 22-year-old youth overcame many challenges in foster care over the years.
While in care, he struggled to connect with foster parents. He was not doing well in school. He lost his job and struggled with his mental health. However, things took a turn towards the end of his time in foster care after he was placed in a kinship home.
Within those two years, with support from his kinship caregiver and the Cayuga Centers team, he obtained an internship, reconnected with a mental health provider, and re-enrolled in school.
He was also able to secure housing, which he had longed for since he aged out of care at 21 years old. The Fair Futures team, a benefit specific to our New York City foster care program, was able to continue to support the young adult’s transition into adulthood from foster care until the age of 26.
Building the foundation for successful futures
Cayuga Centers’ mission focuses on keeping families together. We understand that sometimes families fall apart, but with the right support, they can come back together stronger than ever.
And for those who are unable to be reconnected, Cayuga Centers works to ensure that youth in foster care receive the resources to support them as they age out of care.
As a clinician, Peggy is excited to work in a program making a difference in the lives of these youth and families.
“This program benefits the community because we provide a safe place for children to step down out of congregate care facilities and be able to live in the community with a higher level of support in a family setting.”
Youth in care need safe and loving foster homes to help them heal. To learn about the therapeutic foster care requirements and process, please visit cayugacenters.org/become-a-foster-parent.
