Santa Barbara County's new Intensive Therapeutic Foster Care Program (ITFC) enables us to place more children with mental health or emotional challenges with local foster families, rather than in out-of-town institutional settings. Foster families participating in ITFC receive specialized training, stipends, and professional support to meet the mental health, emotional, behavioral, medical and social needs of these children.
The program minimizes further trauma to children who have already experienced a great deal of loss, by keeping them connected to their community. It enables us to provide a high level of services, to improve outcomes before and after the child turns 18. It ensures compliance with settlement terms of the Katie A. v. Bonta class action lawsuit, which required all counties to expand home and community-based mental health services for foster youth by providing intensive care coordination, in-home services and a therapeutic foster care program. And it reduces long-term expenses, costing roughly half as much per child as a group home placement with behavioral health services.
Several dozen Santa Barbara County residents between the ages of 10 and 21 are currently treated outside of the county. ITFC could help lower that number by recruiting and training local foster families and foster parents to care for youth whose behaviors have moved them closer to hospitalization or group homes--but the program cannot meet the needs of every such situation, and is not intended to. So far, five local families have been identified to foster ITFC youth.
The IFTC program is a collaborative effort of the Santa Barbara County Department of Social Services (DSS); the Santa Barbara County Alcohol, Drug, and Mental Health Services Department; and the Family Care Network, a San Luis Obispo nonprofit that has helped to establish several ITFC programs across the state.
