Children in foster care face many challenges. One of the biggest challenges is the disruption they experience when they have to leave the home where they’ve been living, whether with biological or foster family. The Emergency Foster Care Program aims to provide children with somewhere to go temporarily, on an emergency basis, so they receive the special kind of care and safe environment that a well-supported foster home can provide while they stabilize from the disruption they’ve experienced.
Let It Be Us is partnering with Shelter Youth and Family Services to recruit homes for the Emergency Foster Care program. Shelter provides wraparound services for Emergency Foster Care (EFC) homes when they take children in. While the EFC program is considered a temporary placement (approximately 30-60 days), the goal is to help stabilize children who have experienced inconsistent care. To that end, Shelter Youth and Family Services provides two significant supports in addition to the child’s case worker: a wraparound worker and a therapist dedicated to the EFC program.
The caseworker for the child has primary responsibility for the child’s case, but when the child enters an EFC home, Shelter Youth and Family Services’s wraparound worker will be in contact with that EFC home in the first days of placement to provide support and resources, ensuring the home has what they need to support the child.
Soon after Shelter Youth and Family Services’s wraparound worker, the EFC home will hear from Shelter Youth and Family Services’s therapist who is dedicated to the EFC program. The goal of these supports is to tailor them to the needs of the child and the EFC home. The child may already have therapeutic supports available to him or her, so the Shelter Youth and Family Services EFC therapist is available as additional support or back up – not to replace services that are working well for the child.
The Emergency Foster Care Program is a critical resource and Shelter Youth and Family Services’s supports are built to provide tailored supports to EFC homes, in addition to support from the child’s caseworker, so they are able to care for the children in their care for 30 to 60 days until a more permanent placement is secured.
“They don’t trust easily. They are going to push your buttons and test you, but I have seen kids thrive in the right conditions.” Erica, Shelter Youth and Family Services’s EFC therapist, says.
Your home could be just what a child needs to thrive.
Interested in supporting these most vulnerable children in difficult situations? Want to learn more? Fill out this form and you can speak with a Foster Care Licensing Coach 1:1 for free to learn more.
About Let It Be Us
Let It Be Us is a nonprofit organization dedicated to changing the landscape of foster care and adoption in Illinois. Our mission is to inspire foster care and adoption so more children in care grow up in stable, healthy homes. Funds raised will go to programs that build a strong and innovative bridge between our waiting children and foster and adoptive parents. Learn more at letitbeus.org
