Services

Full Case Management
Foster Care Program

Public Benefits Program
Mental Health Services

Supervised Visitation Programs
Parent Education

Child Parent Psychotherapy
Adopt a Child

Full Case Management

Full Case Management is the coordination and monitoring of services on behalf of a child client and his or her caretakers. These services include abuse prevention/treatment, mental health counseling, psychiatric consultation, case plan management, medical care, dental care and the provision of a nurturing, therapeutic living environment. A key element of case management in child welfare is the ongoing assessment of the client’s needs and progress in services.

Specific case management responsibilities include:

Monthly home visits to every child and the preparation of reports documenting the welfare of the child
Ensuring that the client’s needs are being met by ongoing regular discussions with other service providers for the client, e.g., targeted case managers, therapists, school personnel, and communication with Child Welfare Legal Services attorneys, etc.
Ensuring that all necessary services for the client are in place, e.g., medical screenings, therapeutic services, cursory exams, tutoring etc. and when necessary driving the client to required appointments
Addresses the client’s needs in a timely manner, e.g., effectuates all changes of placements promptly and efficiently
Appearing before Circuit Court Judges on a regular basis and making recommendations on case
Conducting home-studies
Preparing and submitting adoption packages

Notice of Privacy Practices

Foster Care Program

What is the Foster Care Program: A Foster Parent is a special and deeply caring person who has made a decision to provide care to a child or adolescent whose parent(s) are unwilling or unable to care for them on a temporary basis. Foster Parents attend an extensive training by the Citrus Family Care Network and are required to meet standards that have been outlined by the Florida Department of Children and Families.

How to Become a Foster Parent: Being a Foster Parent is perhaps the most difficult and most rewarding of all volunteer positions. It involves hard work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Not only does it involve parenting children who have suffered trauma and loss, it requires working with a team of professionals that are in charge of meeting of all the children’s needs, such as, Family Resource Center, schools, medical facilities, and all necessary resources for the child (including the birth family).

Individuals interested in becoming a Foster Parent must be 21 years or older; be financially self-supporting; and also include fingerprinting for Federal, State and Local background and abuse records checks; as well as the ability to work with many community partners .

What can a Foster Parent do for Our Children: The Foster Parent’s consistency, dependability, and honesty will have the most positive influence on the foster child’s adjustment to their new living environment. Foster homes should provide our child(ren) with a loving and accepting home without trying to replace their birth parent(s); provide a sense of self worth and self-esteem through a functional family life; give them daily care, help and guidance; and provide them with positive values and experiences that they will take with them wherever they go.

For additional information on how to become a foster parent, contact the Citrus recruitment line at 855-786-KIDS (5437) or you can visit www.citrusfcn.com.

Public Benefits Program

FRC’s Public Benefits Program will help 800 Miami-Dade families access a wide range of federal, state and local benefits. The program is designed to reach minority and low-income families, including immigrant families, veterans, survivors of domestic violence, and those with elderly and disabled members. Census and income data show that 262,000 children living in Miami-Dade are living in impoverished or low-income households. With additional supports – through cash benefits, tax credits, childcare and preschool, healthcare and employment assistance – we know that we can build more optimal environments for these children to grow up in. These programs will reduce hunger, family instability, as well as educational and health deficits. This program is designed to help mitigate many of the barriers that have routinely prevented parents from accessing these community benefits and supports – including lack of awareness, complex eligibility criteria, cumbersome application processes, language and literacy challenges, transportation and childcare issues, and stigma and discrimination.

To do this, FRC will have bi-lingual Navigators in Spanish and Haitian Creole and provide enrollment support at locations that are convenient and where families are already coming for services. The program offers three locations – one in Homestead, one in Little Havana, and one in North Miami.

Outpatient Mental Health Services

What is Outpatient Mental Health: Family Resource Center of South Florida, Inc. (FRC) provides intensive support services to children, adolescents and adults in crisis as identified by the Department of Children and Families and the Citrus Family Care Network. Services include parent-child psychotherapy, parenting education and supervised or therapeutically supervised visitations for families in the child welfare program. Psychological evaluations are provided by licensed psychologists and psychiatric services are also provided.

Description of Clients: The primary goal is to provide assessment/triage; referral; and mental health and/or psycho-educational services to families who have open Dependency Cases due to allegations of child abuse, neglect or abandonment.

During the triage visits for abuse and/or neglect, counselors evaluate the parent-child relationship and will focus primarily on Parent Education and develop a treatment plan based on their assessment of the situation to help the families follow their court mandated Case Plan.

Notice of Privacy Practices

Outpatient Mental Health Programs Descriptions

Parenting Skills Training: this program offers court approved psych-educational groups to train parents in the ages and stages of their children’s development. The classes also address the necessary skills for the parents to successfully understand and raise healthy children. As needed, the program offers individual interaction for parents with specific needs.

Child-Parent Psychotherapy: this service includes dyadic therapy for parents and their children under 3 years of age to address an un-formed or mal-formed parent-child bond. The program also provides therapeutic intervention for children less than 5 years of age.

Supervised Visitation: This service is provided to families that have had their children removed by the Department of Children and Families. It allows the parent the opportunity to meet with the child in a safe, nurturing environment. Visits can take place from once a week to three times a week, depending on the court order. The length of each visit is also determined by the judge overseeing the case. It is typically between one and two hours, two or three times per week.

Therapeutically Supervised Visitation: This type of visitation involves the utilization of a Master’s or Doctoral level mental health professional for continuously supervised visitation. There is an underlying assumption that: (1) the child was likely abused and/or neglected and is likely to be fragile in his/her mental health, and/or (2) the parent/caretaker is known to be abusive and/or neglectful of the child. Additionally, there is an underlying assumption that the parent/caretaker is not trustworthy, is pathological in his/her personal functioning and/or pathological in his/her parental functioning, and needs to be monitored intensively by a mental health professional. The supervising professional usually needs to make contemporaneous clinical judgments about the parenting and give assertive instructions and guidance to the parent/caretaker. Furthermore, it is felt by the staff and the court that the relationship between the child and the parent/caretaker is fragile, prone to pathological process, and frequently stressful to the child. In this type of supervised visitation, the professional supervisor often has to assertively instruct and guide the parent/caretaker.

All our therapists are Florida Licensed or License eligible and registered interns with the State of Florida.

Supervised Visitation Programs

Supervised and Therapeutically Supervised Visitations Program

What is Supervised Visitations: The purpose of this program is to improve the parent-child relationship, and thus facilitate the probability of reunification between the parent-child. Services include: instruction in child care skills, disciplinary skills, identifying potential harmful situations in advance, Supervised Visitation, Therapeutically Supervised Visitation, substance abuse treatment and providing time for families to engage in safe play and interaction. Observation and documentation is done at every visit and a report is summarized and submitted to the court for final review.

Why It Is Needed: A child is removed from his/her parents when the courts determine they have been subjected to abuse, neglect, abandonment or exploitation. As part of the rehabilitative Court Case Plan, Supervised Visitation or Therapeutically Supervised Visitation is ordered. SV is conducted by a Bachelor’s level professional and TSV is conducted by a Master’s level professional.

How We Help: The client’s case is referred to FRC when the courts determine a child has been subjected to abuse, neglect, abandonment or exploitation and assigned a rehabilitative Visitation Case Plan by a judge. It needs to be strictly enforced because every parent(s) is at risk of losing their parental rights. Depending on the court ordered Case Plan, the supervised visits may continue for months based on progress. Reunification takes place if/when the judge determines the client successfully completed the case plan within the allotted time. Visitations, clinical and mental evaluations and other wraparound services are a component in this determination.

Parent Education

What is Parent Education: The FRC Parent Education Program is designed to promote positive parent-child interaction and healthy childhood growth and development, thereby preventing child abuse. It is one of only 10 such programs in Miami-Dade that is approved by the Chief Judge of the Dependency Court. FRC’s Parent Education Program has been in operation in Miami-Dade since 1999.

FRC’s Parent Education Program is funded in part by The Children’s Trust. The Children’s Trust is a dedicated source of revenue established by voter referendum to improve the lives of children and families in Miami-Dade County.

This program utilizes the Nurturing Parenting Program®, which is a research based program that is modeled after two decades of research conducted by. This is an internationally recognized psycho-educational program that is distinguished for its effectiveness in improving parenting skills and parent-child interactions with at-risk families. The intent of this program is to increase the strength and stability of the family, increase the parents’/ caretakers’/ guardians’/ prospective caretakers’ confidence and competence in their parenting abilities, and to afford children a stable and supportive family environment and otherwise enhance child development.

How We Help: The FRC Parent Education program provides a 16-class course that is taught in English and Spanish. Each class lasts 120 minutes. This program is an evidenced based, community-based, culturally and linguistically sensitive, nurturing program for parents and adolescents designed to prevent the occurrence or recurrence of child abuse. The Adult-Adolescent Parenting Inventory-2 will be given as pre-treatment inventory and post-treatment inventory measures. Families will be tracked for up to eighteen months after completion of the program to be able to assess no findings of verified child maltreatment. The goals of parenting education are to strengthen families by providing relevant, effective education and support and to encourage an optimal environment for the healthy growth and development of parents and children. This program is consistent with current, validated research and information regarding child development and is based on best practices of parenting education and family support.

For more information, please click the link below:

“Nurturing Parenting Program”

Description of Clients: Our target population includes parents in Miami-Dade identified as abusive/neglectful of children by the Florida Department of Children & Families, and at-risk families in need of parent education services based on at least one of the following: teenage parents, pregnant women, new parents, parents of children with physical, intellectual, and/or emotional problems, families with significant economic difficulties, parents who abuse alcohol, drugs or illegal substances low income single parents and parents who have a history of child abuse and/or neglect. In order to increase community collaboration and significantly impact high need target areas, referrals are received through Department of Children & Families, Citrus Family Care Network provider agencies, self-referral, Juvenile and Family Court, the Miami-Dade Public Schools, and other sources throughout the community of Miami-Dade county.

Child Parent Psychotherapy

Child Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), also sometimes called dyadic therapy, is an evidence-based, attachment therapy for children aged birth through 5 years who are showing mental health or behavioral problems, including symptoms of post-traumatic stress. The treatment is geared towards children who have trauma caused by significant and substantial experiences of neglect, abuse, or prolonged and unresolved pain. The therapy brings the parent and child dyad together to address these issues and form bonds in a safe and nurturing environment. In addition, it enhances the parent’s and/or caregiver’s understanding of child development including cognition, communication, physical and social/emotional.

For FRC clients, Child Parent Psychotherapy is very often court-mandated after a parent has had his/her child removed because of abuse or neglect. Children under age five comprise the largest percentage of maltreated children (Wulczyn, Hislop, & Harden, 2002; Dicker and Gordon, 2004). Many of these young children have both developmental and mental health problems, but typically must wait until school age when their problems are much more severe before they are identified or receive services. FRC CPP Program ensures that more children and parents are getting the care they need earlier, while at the same time increasing the likelihood of reunification of the family.

FRC launched our Child Parent Psychotherapy Program in August 2010. Prior to the launch of our program, there was only one program in Miami that provided this service, causing parents to be put on a 3-6 month waiting list, become out of compliance with their case plans, and then be in jeopardy of losing their children permanently.

Program Outcomes: A three year trial (2005-2007) using the CPP model in Miami-Dade was conclusive in showing it to be a positive intervention for both child and parent. Specifically, the trial showed that there were no further reports of abuse or neglect during the treatment period and up to post-assessments for participants. Reports of child abuse and neglect to the Department of Children and Families went from 97% of children prior to treatment to none of the children completing treatment. Second, there were permanency placements of either reunification with the parent or a family member for all children completing the child-parent dyadic psychotherapy who were not in parental custody at the beginning of the project.

Additionally, the health and developmental status of children improved. Following treatment, 50% of the children who were screened showed improvement in their developmental functioning as determined by the ASQ (Ages and Stages Questionnaire). The percentage of caregivers reporting depressive symptoms, as determined by the BDI-II (Beck Depression Inventory), decreased from 53% pretreatment to 32% following completion of treatment, with 68% of caregivers reporting minimal to no depression after treatment at the time of the post-assessment. Finally, parent-child relationship functioning based on both observational assessments and parent reports improved significantly for both parents and children.

Adoptions

Why should you consider adopting a child in need?

On any given day, about 1,000 Florida children are looking for a family to love them and a permanent place to call home. The parents of these children have had their parental rights terminated. Thus, these children in our care will not be returned to their birth parents.

Some people have not yet experienced the joy of sharing life with a child.

Some people with grown children find their homes too quiet.

Some people want to give back in a meaningful way.

Some people want the sense of completion that children can bring to a family.

Adopt A Child Today

This beautiful sibling group is looking for a forever family. Reginald loves his siblings and strives daily to be a great big brother and role model for them. Kaylana looks up to her older brother Reginald and loves playing games with her younger brother Aiden. Aiden aspires to be a future Basketball Player in the NBA.

For more information about adopting a child, please contact: Leiseann Mentis at 305-960-5541 or LMentis@frcflorida.org.

You can also contact Citrus Family Care Network for more information, www.citrusfcn.com.

Visit The Miami Heart Gallery to see some of the many children in Miami-Dade looking for a loving home.

Licenses and Certificates

Licensed by DCF as a Child Placing Agency
Licensed by DCF as an Adoption Agency
Licensed by DCF as an Outpatient Substance Abuse Treatment Program
Approved as a Child Welfare Agency, Adoption Agency, Foster Care Agency, and Community Mental Health Center by The Joint Commission.
Approved as a Child Welfare Agency, Adoption Agency, Foster Care Agency, and Community Mental Health Center by C.O.A.
Approved as a Child Welfare Agency, Adoption Agency, Foster Care Agency, and Community Mental Health Center by The Joint Commission and C.O.A.