Virginia Home expands with community services
After 168 years of taking in children for residential care, the Virginia Home for Boys and Girls is spreading out into community services.
A new program of therapeutic foster-care services will include a network of families trained in the same teaching-family model that has been used in residential programs at the Virginia Home for Boys and Girls. Four families have completed the 30-hour training program and have a potential match with a child. An information session for potential foster parents will be held June 2.
"This is a huge shift for an organization that is as old as we are," said John Dougherty, the Virginia Home's vice president for business development. "We have seen a decrease in demand for our residential care. Our response is to go where the need is. The need is to help these kids stay in the communities they have come to know and love. We are taking our time, treasure and talent off campus and into the community."
Traditionally, the Virginia Home for Boys and Girls has accepted up to 32 children, primarily teenagers, to live and attend school on the 44-acre campus near West Broad Street and Parham Road in western Henrico County. If the children went into foster care, it would be through another agency. With the new program, "we have built a full continuum of care to allow kids to move into any model of care that is appropriate for them," Dougherty said. "Instead of prescribing what we think they need, we are able to provide what they say and show us they need."
Foster parents will have the resources of the residential program backing them up. "In the event there is something challenging them, one of the staff is available to work through the situation with the kids," he said.
Children aren't placed with foster parents until they've had successful visits with the family, said Anna Antell, foster-care program manager.
"The youth's voice is extremely important," Antell said. "We are working to make sure the process is taking as much time as the child and foster parent needs for it to take. We don't want to set the child up for yet another loss. We want it to be successful for the foster parent and, most importantly, the child."
Katherine Calos
20 May 2010
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/local/article/FOST20_20100519-222802/345663/
