Foster Family Care

Catholic Guardian Society and Home Bureau has a long history of providing Foster Family Care Services to the families and children of New York City. Carefully screened foster parents provide family care for children whose parents are facing obstacles that inhibit their ability to ensure their child’s safety.

The challenges faced by families are myriad---substance abuse, mental health issues, lack of family support, domestic violence, inadequate housing, lack of income and employment, poor parenting skills, etc. Unfortunately, this can lead to neglect or abuse of their children.

Our committed team of caseworkers, nurses, and mental health professionals work together with the foster families, birth families, and children to address these issues. Our goal is to work with families to address their identified needs in an efficient and holistic manner. We work to ensure the safety of the children while they are in our care, and to achieve a nurturing, stable and permanent home for them as quickly as possible.

Our foster family care services are closely linked to the neighborhoods, communities, cultural and religious groups of the families and children we serve. Within the community, we provide children with a safe, nurturing, protective, therapeutic environment that promotes cultural and ethnic identities, while addressing their unique educational, social, behavioral, developmental, medical and emotional needs. We help children and their families establish improved family relationships, connectedness, and whenever possible, family reunification.

Our Family to Family approach to service delivery enables both birth parents and foster parents to focus on the critical outcome of permanence for children. Concurrent planning with both families enables us to work towards reunification with the birth family but also be prepared to move towards adoption if reunification is not viable.

Children in our Foster Family Care Program originate primarily from Manhattan and the Bronx. In Manhattan, we serve Lower Manhattan, Central Harlem, Washington Heights, and Inwood. In the Bronx we work in Morrisania, Crotona, Fordham, University Heights, Riverdale, Parkchester, Soundview, Throgs Neck, and Coop City. We have community-based offices in these neighborhoods which make services easily accessible for families.

Our Foster Family Care Program includes the following components:

• Family Reunification Services
• Kinship Foster Family Care
• Therapeutic Foster Family Care
• Special Medical Foster Family Care
• Adoption Services
• Pre- and Post-Adoption Services

Family Reunification Services (Foster Boarding Homes)

Family Reunification Services provide community based foster homes for children in Manhattan and the Bronx. When children are placed in foster care in their own neighborhoods, it helps to reduce the trauma of separation from their parents by allowing them to keep familiar things—school, friends, recreation and sports programs, and other personal attachments. Catholic Guardian Society and Home Bureau serves approximately 1200 children living in 700 foster homes. Our children range in age from infancy to young adulthood (21).

In fact, our foster parents have responded to the need to open their homes to adolescents who might otherwise be placed in residential care. To be responsive to this teen population of youth, we have developed a specialized program that focuses on the developmental needs of adolescents, and provides additional services for them, such as recreational specialist and vocational and educational specialists. We also provide additional supports for their foster parents, such as having a sociotherapist who addresses behavioral issues, as well as a social worker.

Of course, we also provide care for babies, toddlers, and young children. We emphasize keeping brothers and sisters together whenever possible, so there is a great need for foster families who can maintain sibling groups in their home. Our casework staff works in conjunction with our nursing staff to ensure the health and well-being of our children.

Educational Specialists function as liaisons with the Dept. of Education to make sure that all children receive appropriate educational class placement and opportunities. Birth parents and foster parents are both encouraged to be active participants in the child’s educational experience.

Family Reunification strives to expedite the reunion of children with their birth families and to reduce their length of stay in foster care. We provide a supportive environment for birth parents to address their needs and develop support networks to assist them in developing strategies for better parenting. We assist families to establish long-term community linkages needed for successful discharge planning.

Kinship Foster Family Care

Here at CGSHB we feel very strongly that children who need to be placed in foster care should maintain family ties. We make every effort to identify a family resource who can meet the qualifications to become a foster parent. This enables the child to remain in a familiar setting and to live with relatives with whom he or she has a pre-existing relationship. This helps to lessen the trauma of separation from parents and assists in promoting a comfortable home life. Children are able to continue to participate in functions of their extended family on a regular basis.

We have many kinship families of all relationships—grandparents, aunts and uncles, older siblings, and cousins. Even biologically unrelated godparents and close friends of the family are kinship families. The main focus is the family connection.

Kinship families are eligible for all the benefits of being a foster parent, as well as being accountable for all the responsibilities it entails. A lot of kinship families also become adoptive parents if the birth parents are unable to plan for their child’s return. Kinship families have the same commitment to permanency as the agency does.

Therapeutic Foster Boarding Homes (TFBH)

Our Therapeutic Foster Boarding Home Program provides family-based care for children from Manhattan and the Bronx between the ages of 7 and 17 who are emotionally disturbed. The program gives children the benefit of residing with families in the community who are especially trained to meet their needs. The therapeutic family setting provides an alternative to hospitalization or institutional care for children in need of clinical interventions.

The TFBH approach includes birth parents, foster parents, and youth as team members and they regularly attend staff meetings, treatment sessions, and planning sessions. In addition, the birth families and foster families receive intensive training in behavior management. The model emphasizes strong supportive backup for the families as well as extensive treatment for the child.

An important feature of TFBH is our strong staffing. The Social Worker works in partnership with a Sociotherapist to manage the emotional and behavioral needs of the children. In addition, a Foster Parent Trainer provides training to all TFBH foster families utilizing a structured training curriculum that combines behavior management techniques with clinical components. A Recreational Therapist provides clinically focused activities with children in the program. A Mental Health Coordinator ensures on-going therapeutic services, planning, collaboration, and consultation with program staff and other service providers.

Special Medical Foster Family Care

The Special Medical Foster Boarding Home Program strives to ensure the optimal development of physically compromised children placed in our care, consistent with best practices in family support and permanency. The superior services available through this specialized program help children to thrive in a supportive family environment. Skilled foster parents assist the child to develop the skills needed for functioning in society in partnership with social work and nursing staff.

Since permanency for children is our ultimate goal, the program diligently endeavors to re-unify youngsters with their birth parents or other relative caregiver whenever feasible. As a concurrent plan, it is the expectation that many medical foster parents will become adoptive parents for the children in their care.

Medical Foster Parents (MFP) are a strategic element in the Medical Care model and a key to the success of the program. These parents provide the home, set the tone and help develop and implement medical treatment plans. The Registered Nurse (RN) provides medical care management for the children in this program by establishing a close relationship with the foster parents whereby they are trained in the specific care required for the child. This Program seeks to serve children with special medical conditions who require an intensive level of care to ensure their optimum physical development and medical stability.

Children with special medical conditions include those with chronic health conditions such as HIV/AIDS, chronic asthma and other pulmonary conditions, sickle cell anemia, diabetes, cerebral palsy, chronic neurological conditions, chronic cardiac disease, cancer, severe developmental delays including mental retardation, ambulation problems, and those who are wheelchair bound.

Adoption

At CGSHB adoption is a permanency outcome on our continuum of care for children and families. Although most children who enter foster care are reunited with their birth parents or a member of their extended family, in some instances an alternative plan is needed. Some parents voluntarily decide that their child’s needs would best be met through permanency with another family. In other situations, parents are just unable to overcome the obstacles that brought their child into foster care. In these cases, the preferred plan for children is adoption.

CGSHB has an expert staff of trained adoption expeditors to assist parents to achieve the goal of adoption. We complete adoption homestudies with the prospective adoptive parents and make application for financial and medical subsidy for those children who qualify. Parents are referred to experienced adoption attorneys to work with them to legally finalize the adoption.

We are fortunate that our foster parents become adoptive parents for children in their care over 90% of the time. However, sometimes a foster family is unable to adopt. When this happens we recruit an adoptive family for the child, and take great care in matching the interests of the child with the prospective family. We take steps to help the child get to know the adoptive family through a series of visitations that form a basis for the nurturing relationship that is needed to form a family.

It is a wonderful experience to be in Court when the Judge approves an adoption and makes a child part of a “forever family”!

Pre- and Post-Adoption Services

Keeping Adoptive Families Strong is a newly funded program at Catholic Guardian Society and Home Bureau that works with pre- and post- adoptive children and their families. Usually, when a child is in foster care before he/she is adopted, the family receives home visits, social services, and a foster care stipend. Once the child is adopted, services may be discontinued or reduced. However, the families and children may still have unanswered questions about birth families and siblings; how to handle behavior, parenting, and adoption issues; school; medical/mental health services; and so on.

Keeping Adoptive Families Strong was started to address adoptive families’ concerns and to provide a place for education, understanding, and assistance. Staff is specially trained and educated in issues surrounding adoption. Services provided are support groups for adolescents and adults, family counseling, referrals, crisis intervention, entitlement assistance, bereavement counseling, and home visits when needed.

We accept all referrals in Manhattan and the Bronx, and services are free for low-income residents and families with children in foster care in those boroughs.

If you are planning to adopt, CGSHB offers pre-adoption informational meetings which cover such topics as subsidy, identifying services you will need after the adoption, discussion of on-going family contact, the differences between foster care and adoption, and the importance of being your child’s forever family.

For families who have already adopted, we provide post-adoption services, including support groups for pre-teens, adolescents and on-going parent groups. In addition to information, referral, and support, case management services are available to families who are experiencing difficulties.'

For information about our program, please call us at our main office in Manhattan, 212-371-1011, extension 2153 or 2117.

Our customer service sites are located at: