Therapeutic Foster Parent Awareness of and Use of Agency-Offered Supports

Background and Purpose: Therapeutic foster care (TFC) provides a therapeutic environment for children in foster care who have behaviors that cannot be met in a traditional foster home setting. With high therapeutic foster parent turnover comes a more significant potential for children and youth to experience placement changes. Thus, a greater focus on therapeutic foster parent retention could help to ensure an adequate number of foster homes available. This study sought to answer the following research questions: 1) Are TFC parents aware of the supports offered by their licensing agency? 2) Of the supports offered by licensing agencies, which are accessed most frequently? 3) Which individual and fostering characteristics are most significantly associated with support use? and 4) What supports are helpful to TFC parents and what barriers do they face in accessing supports?

Methods: This study used a cross-sectional, mixed-methods approach. Across the 6 participating agencies, 132 participants completed an online survey and 20 participants participated in an individual interview. Survey participants were between the ages of 26 and 72, with a mean age of 48 years old, White (n = 71, 54%), non-Hispanic (n = 125, 95%), and self-identified as women (n = 104, 79%). Just under half (49%) of participants reported living in a rural environment. Participants indicated fostering for an average of around 7.5 years (SD= 7.1). About three-quarters of the sample (n = 96, 74%) reported fostering primarily children with behavioral health needs and the sample was split between individuals whose primary goal was to foster only (n = 72, 55%) and those who had the goal of adopting (n = 60, 46%). Associations between foster parent characteristics and support use were assessed using hierarchical linear regression. Qualitative data was analyzed from a phenomenological approach using inductive coding.

Results: Race, reason for fostering, and length of fostering experience were all associated with the percentage of support used within the past 12 months. Black foster parents used more supports when compared to White foster parents (B = 26.41, p < .001). Support use increased as length of fostering increased (B = 1.35, p = .002). Those became foster parents with the hope of adopting used less support than those who became foster parents to foster (B = -27.08, p < .001). Further, combining survey and interview findings suggest that although participants are accessing supports offered by their agency, there may be a misfit between what agencies perceive to be helpful and what therapeutic foster parents need.

Conclusions and Implications: The results of this study can be used to inform program improvement efforts aimed at enhancing the experience of therapeutic foster parents. This study suggests the need for agencies to reconsider not only how the supports they offer are messaged throughout the agency, but also how the supports themselves are being provided to ensure that they are best meeting the support needs of TFC parents. This is best done by including licensed TFC parents in evaluating and updating policies and procedures at the agency level.