Foster Care

Treatment Foster Care (TFC)

TFC provides intensive treatment services for children and youth with serious emotional and/or behavioral challenges for a defined period of time in a community, home-based environment.

• The agency recruits, selects, and trains treatment foster parents (TFP’s) from the local community. The TFP’s work under contract and in collaboration with Kairos’ TFC team to create planned, purposeful, structured environments within their homes.
• The TFPs join with teams of Kairos professionals, family members, and additional community supports to create, implement, and periodically review an individualized service plan for youth placed in their homes.
• These service plans identify each youth’s unique needs in a number of life domains, then outline a host of services and interventions designed to enable measurable progress toward the youth’s identified goals.

TFC may be an appropriate service for youth exiting residential care, allowing them opportunity to reside in a family-based treatment environment before moving on to family-of-origin, or standard foster care placement. Other youth may be preparing for independent living.  It may also be appropriate for certain youth who would otherwise be placed in residential treatment but do not require that level of care to succeed, making TFC the least restrictive, best fit option for placement.

• TFPs receive:
  • Individualized onboarding training plus annual continuing education
  • Daily check in opportunities with the Kairos team
  • Guaranteed monthly respite
  • Access to a 24-7 on-call support line
  • $3,400 tax-free monthly stipend

Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS), or other entities interested in contracting for this service may refer youth to the program. A screening process conducted by the agency assures that appropriate candidates are selected for placement and matched as well as possible to the available foster homes.

Kairos Treatment Foster Care (TFC) works with ODHS, county mental health, and the Oregon Youth Authority (OYA) to place youth in TFC homes that are determined to be the best fit for their reported needs.

The youth are ages 4 to 17 years old and come from a variety of different backgrounds, all of them displaying a high level of need that meets medical necessity for this level of care.

Some of the issues TFC youth may be facing include, but are not limited to:

• Dealing with issues of abuse and neglect
• Extreme poverty or houselessness
• Living with learning disabilities or cognitive impairments
• Interaction with the juvenile justice system
• Lack of natural resources and protective factors