Therapeutic Foster Care (TFC)

Pima County / Maricopa County / Pinal County / Yuma County / Santa Cruz County

• Children placed in TFC homes can have heightened emotional and behavioral needs that require intensive parenting skills.
• This is a rewarding way for skilled and/or experienced parents to provide foster care.
• In most cases, these children have been removed from their families and have lived in various group homes and/or more restrictive settings.
• Stability and safety are important needs for therapeutic foster children.
• Therapeutic foster children look to the foster parent for structured but nurturing support and to learn how to be a part of a healthy family unit.
• Therapeutic foster children must learn how to function in the self-care, future planning, social, academic, leisure/recreational and community realms without the support of their biological families.
• Because many children requiring therapeutic foster care come from a background of abuse and neglect, each child and their foster family are assigned a coordinator.
• The coordinator aids in problem-solving and behavior-management strategies.

Objective of the Therapeutic Foster Care Program:

Transition each child into a permanent family setting—to a DES foster family, adoptive family or biological family for reunification—that will provide permanence.