Our Treatment Foster Care (TFC) program aims to provide high quality behavioral health services for children in our community in a supportive family setting. TFC caters to the behavioral, emotional, psychological, and social needs of children and youth by providing a stable, nurturing, treatment-oriented approach to strengthen a child’s connection with birth families and work toward a permanent living situation.
Children and youth come into foster care for numerous reasons. Foster care provides children a safe place when it is not possible for them to be with their own families. These youth have special emotional or behavioral needs that demand extra time and skill from foster parents and a coordinated treatment team. The child’s length of time in treatment foster care is dependent on their needs. Once they graduate from treatment foster care, they may return home, move into regular foster care, or live independently.
The treatment foster care home is viewed as the primary treatment setting, and the foster parent(s) are trained and supported to help the child achieve the goals in their treatment plan. While the role of foster parents is vital, treatment planning is a team function carried out under the clinical direction of qualified program staff.
Treatment typically focuses on teaching the necessary skills and responses to help the child and their family deal with the circumstances which have created the need for treatment. Each child has the support of a treatment team that provides direction and assistance in meeting each individual child’s treatment goals. The team is made up of the foster parent(s), a treatment coordinator, a therapist, the child and his/her family, the state social worker, and other community resource professionals for the child. Support from all of the team members allows the child to benefit from a home environment and community-based setting while receiving intensive treatment and clinical services.
Who Can Become a TFC Parent?
- A TFC parent must be an adult over the age of 21 years old; and without a history of criminal offenses against children.
- TFC parents can be single, married, divorced, or living with a partner or other family member.
- A TFC parent can live in an apartment or house, and either rent or own.
- There is not a minimum income, as long as a TFC parent can support themselves and provide stability for the child being cared for.
- TFC parents can be of any race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or culture.
Individuals interested in becoming Therapeutic Foster Parents should contact New Mexico Solutions at (505) 268-0701.