Treatment Foster Care is for children whose families cannot meet their special needs. These children receive individualized services from a team of professionally-trained foster families and mental health professionals. Specialized foster care is a short-term solution until the child’s special needs are met and families learn to manage them, or until the child is freed for adoption or finds a home with a relative. This level of foster care is different from family foster care because the children have special needs (behavioral or medical) and to provide this level of care, foster caregivers must receive additional and intensive training to care for these children
Services include intensive supervision, psychological services, and/or medical treatment. Many children served in specialized foster care are emotionally or behaviorally disturbed, medically fragile and/or require special medical treatment due to physical conditions or diseases, or have developmental disabilities. All agencies that provide foster care programs are licensed by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.