The Benefits of Family for Challenged Children
Children grow best in family and community settings. Bellefaire's therapeutic foster care program is dedicated to providing these benefits to severely emotionally and behaviorally disturbed children and youth, ages four to 21. Typically, these youngsters have been in multiple placements and have significant mental health and/or medical challenges. Therapeutic foster care allows them to receive individualized, highly structured, intensive treatment services while living in a nurturing, family environment.

Therapeutic foster care can:

• Offer a family-based treatment alternative for youngsters who have difficulties functioning in group-living environments and who do not require placement in a more restrictive setting.
• Facilitate positive emotional and behavioral adjustments and strengthen the child's ability to function in the community.
• Help the child who has lived in a more restrictive setting readjust to family and community living.
• Provide long-term placement for children who are unlikely to return home.
• Help such children learn to set goals, maintain stability, and master the skills needed to live independently.

Who are these youngsters?
Therapeutic foster care children and youth have unique needs, many of which are the result of their previous experiences. These youngsters may be fire-starters or sexual offenders. They may exhibit severe aggression or self-destructive tendencies, or they may suffer from chemical dependency.

What do therapeutic foster families need to succeed?
Bellefaire takes special care to place each child in a home especially adapted to his or her needs. In many therapeutic foster families, at least one parent has a background in social or mental health work. Therapeutic foster families must:

• Involve every member of the family in the foster child's treatment.
• Be licensed by the State of Ohio.
• Commit to taking ongoing training
• Have experience with children and/or youth.

Bellefaire is 24-hour support.
Bellefaire therapeutic foster families are never alone. Each family is assigned a case manager who is available for daily consultation and 24-hour crisis assistance. He or she coordinates all necessary resources and maintains the foster child's continuity of care and access to required services, including:

• Ongoing assessment and treatment planning
• Medication assessment and psychiatric consultation
• Issue-specific group work
• Intensive supervision
• 24-hour crisis intervention
• Medical and dental care
• Respite care

To learn more, call Foster Care at Bellefaire JCB.
Cleveland area: 216-320-8518
Toll free: 800-205-8534
Or email infoFC@bellefairejcb.org

This project funded in part by the US Department of Health and Human Services, Children's Bureau, Adoption Opportunity Demonstration Grant #90 CO 0995, Adoption in Ohio's Heartland.