RBHA enhances the quality of life for the people of Richmond by promoting and providing quality behavioral health and developmental services that are available, accessible, and cost-effective.
Mental Health Services For Children
Therapeutic Foster Care Program
Therapeutic Foster Care provides treatment foster care for behaviorally and emotionally disturbed youth. An important task of the Program is to assist in permanency planning through reunification with biological families, adoption or permanent foster care. TFC provides services to youth who are severely emotionally disturbed from birth to 21. Many youth referred to the TFC Program have histories of multiple placements, psychiatric hospitalizations and/or residential treatment as well as the trauma of being separated from their primary caretaker. This suggests that, including the initial traumatic precipitant, the youth has experience numerous traumatic disruptions. Thus, TFC utilizes the Stress Model (Bruce Perry and Bryan Post) to address reactive attachment disorder issues. Social learning therapy is utilized with older adolescents to assist with challenges of these developmental stages.
The RBHA, in conjunction with the Richmond Department of Social Services (RDSS) has operated the RBHA Mental Health TFC Program since 1991. Since that time, over 200 RDSS children have received these very intensive mental health services. The Program has been very successful, as evidenced by the fact that the annual program evaluations have each year reflected scores between 90-95% for successfully maintaining the TFC children in the Program and in fact, successfully transitioning a significant percentage of those children to lower levels of care, including reunification with biological relatives and adoptions.
All Therapeutic parents in the Program must attend general foster care training provided by RDSS as well as of specialized training by RBHA. Matching Therapeutic Foster children to the appropriate home is of the utmost importance. The RBHA/RDSS TFC Program will not place children just entering the program in homes with younger children, unless approved by RDSS. More restrictive criteria will be utilized when placing TFC children with histories of sexually aggressive behavior.
