If you’re interested in therapeutic foster care, you should keep in mind that it can be quite challenging. Therapeutic foster care refers to caring for children with various emotional and behavioral challenges. Sometimes, the foster child may also have a medical issue, but mostly the issues are emotional/behavioral.

The Challenges

Many children placed in therapeutic foster care move around quite a lot, from one foster home to another. As a result, they might experience feelings of displacement or not fitting in, which might lead them to act out.

The Demand for Therapeutic Foster Care

There is a great demand for families who are willing to set up a therapeutic foster home. They undergo training to enable them to do this. Plus, at times, they may receive more reimbursement than they would in a regular foster home.

Fewer Children Assigned in Therapeutic Foster Care

The flip side is that there is usually a limit to the number of kids in a therapeutic foster home. This enables the foster parents to focus on the child/children who have been assigned to them. So even if the process is more challenging, as more care is required, it is possible to focus on the child more because there aren’t that many children in your care.

Encouraging the Development of the Child

What a foster parent needs to keep in mind is that a child in a therapeutic foster home needs a mix of caring and discipline, just like any other child. They need to be able to trust their foster parents.

But all these things aren’t going to be there immediately. It takes a lot of time for foster parents and children to get to a point where they are living together harmoniously in a way that encourages the development of the child.

Contact us to learn more about the process of setting up a therapeutic foster home.