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2002 Annual Report
Text Box: La Familia’s Treatment Foster Care Program has ten years of experience providing a foster family based treatment approach to working with severely emotionally and behaviorally disturbed children. La Familia attributes its successes to the combined knowledge and experience of our treatment parents and our TFC staff. La Familia currently has 55 licensed treatment foster families, one third of which have been licensed with La Familia for over five years. The longevity of the treatment parents is what gives La Familia the strength and ability to provide quality services for special needs children. La Familia’s Treatment Foster Care Program is recognized in the community as being a strong program, which both humbles and motivates us. We constantly challenge ourselves to learn from our mistakes, to take more risks, and to provide leadership. La Familia utilizes a multidisciplinary team approach to treatment. The treatment team includes the youth, the youth’s family, the treatment parents, the treatment coordinator, the Legal Guardian, the Guardian-ad-litem and other significant people in the youth’s life. The treatment parents are the primary interventionists, providing ongoing treatment in the home. The goal of every treatment parent is to create a home environment which facilitates close personal relationships, while utilizing supportive control to confront behaviors that interfere with that closeness. La Familia utilizes a variety of interventions that are tailored to the individual needs of the child. The treatment coordinator is the primary support for the treatment parents, legal guardian, and when appropriate, the biological parents. They provide technical and clinical support to the treatment parents on a regular basis. Furthermore, they facilitate the treatment planning process in consultation with the other treatment team members. La Familia employ master’s level clinicians to fulfill the responsibilities of the treatment coordinator position, recognizing the complexities of working with such a high risk population. La Familia’s Treatment Foster Care program supports the professional growth of the treatment parents and the TFC staff through ongoing supervision and training. The Treatment Foster Care program has recently gone through a staffing change in an effort to provide more support and training to both treatment families and TFC staff. Direct clinical supervision of the TFC program is now divided between two new Text Box: supervisors, who each supervise between 4-6 treatment coordinators. The Director of TFC oversees the entire program and directly supervises the support staff, the TFC supervisors and the placement coordinator. While we are all adjusting to the internal changes, we are quickly realizing the benefits of having such a strong managerial team in the TFC program. La Familia served 69 children over the past year ranging in ages from 4 years old to 17 years old. Over 75% of the children discharged from the treatment foster care program, were discharged to a lower level of care, which included either a transition to an adoptive family or reunification with their biological family. Thanks to a grant from the Children Youth and Families Department, La Familia has the opportunity to offer comprehensive services to families who adopt special needs children. La Familia’s Treatment Foster Care program works closely with the Associate Director of Adoptions, who manages this grant for La Familia to provide these services for children in our TFC program. This is a wonderful way to provide continuity of care to the children who have been in our TFC program as they transition to their adoptive families. In most situations, it is the treatment parents who become the primary support for the adoptive family as the child moves through the adoption transition. After all, the treatment parents are the experts for the children in their care. La Familia is learning from our mistakes as we become more knowledgeable and skilled in this area. We are preparing to take a leadership role in the community to help other providers as they are asked to participate more fully in an adoption process, which in the past has been entirely managed by Children Youth and Families Department. Thanks to the Children Youth and Families Department Text Box: for collaborating with us, for teaching us and for helping us to position ourselves for more responsibilities in this area. We are humbled by the task and inspired to do our best. La Familia’s Treatment Foster Care program continues to support other treatment modalities within the program to assist youth in managing their challenges and soaring with their strengths. The Equine-therapy program, Life Skills training program and acupuncture clinic have proven successful. We are hoping to add biofeedback therapy, a treatment modality which has proven to be effective with children who suffer from severe PTSD symptoms, ADHD and attachment disorders. Lastly, we are also looking to start up group therapy for sexually reactive children. Thanks to our treatment parents and TFC staff who continue to find ways to provide self care and support for each other. Treatment parents in Belen are getting together on a regular basis to support one another, the reading group in Rio Rancho, facilitated by one of our senior treatment parents continues to be a support for families and I “hear” that one may be starting up in the East Mountains. La Familia is getting ready to start up our brown bag lunches for treatment parents again. We recognize the importance of staying connected in order to stay strong. Thanks to all for the endless energy and care that goes into working with children and allowed us to benefit and grow as well. Linda Saling, LISW Director of Treatment Foster Care Text Box: TREATMENT FOSTER CARE
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