Therapies to Keep Young Kids Out of Foster Care
During 2014, more than 49,000 New York City children received services designed to keep them out of foster care. Some 20 percent were younger than 4 years old. In the months ahead, for the first time, hundreds of such children and their parents will begin receiving a range of supports catered to meet their particular needs.
In the fall, the Administration for Children's Services (ACS) will roll out a $7.4 million initiative providing targeted services for families in parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn. Much of the help will be clinical in nature, including trauma-informed therapy as well as dyadic therapies that treat children and their parents together.
The city's evidence-based foster care prevention programs SafeCare and Child-Parent Psychotherapy, which are already available to families, will expand to annually serve 300 more families with young kids. Meanwhile, other programs tasked with keeping kids out of foster care will begin coordinating with clinicians to link families with therapeutic interventions earmarked for babies, toddlers and their parents.
Three years ago, ACS launched an effort targeting preventive services to families with teens. This new initiative is the first designed to keep a large number of babies and toddlers at home and out of foster care.
Find more information about preventive services here.