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United for Families, Caregiver support Program, Indian River County Children's services Advisory Committee C . PROGRAM DESCRIPTION (Entire Section C, 1 — 6, not to exceed two pages. Box will ex and as you type) ist Priority Needs area addressed. Mental Health rTheprogramn fly describe program activities including location of services . objective is to retain foster parents in Indian River County and decrease the numbertions to local foster children. To achieve this, UFF hired one Indian River County mentorool of qualified, veteran foster parents. The mentor receives $ 500 monthly in return forgroup and in-home support to new foster parents . The mentor was one of five who received 15 hours of training from a Certified Behavior Analyst in 2006 by the Department of Children and Families . A foster parent coordinator oversees the program, supervises all five mentors, and provides additional training to help mentors identify local resources . Children' s Services Advisory Committee funding is used to fund the mentor position in Indian River County. Indian River County' s mentor attends all Foster Parent Association meetings, assists in the training of new foster parents and meets regularly with the foster parent coordinator. Group activities take place at the UFF location in Vero Beach, while in-home services are provided throughout the county. The mentor is assigned to new foster parents as they are licensed and assists in troubleshooting problems, identifying and coordinating community resources, and guiding foster parents through the system. The mentor serves the general foster care community in he same fashion. Some of the questions mentors might address include: • Why isn ' t my foster child responding to the discipline techniques I learned in training? • How do I relate to my foster child' s biological parents, and how much interaction should I have with them? • My foster teen-ager thinks she' s in charge of her siblings — How do I make her understand her new role as child and not caregiver? The mentor monitors all phone calls and reports all activity with foster parents. The foster parent coordinator files reports of all activity, tracks problems and requests and monitors mentor esponsiveness and overall program success . The mentor is available to all foster parents for the duration of their service. Exit interviews with foster parents who leave the system help indicate rogram res onsiveness. Briefly describe how your program addresses the stated need/problem. Describe how your program follows a recognized "best practice" (see definition on page 12 of the Instructions) and provide evidence that indicates proposed strategies are effective with target population. The number of foster homes recruited each year is not enough to make up for the homes that decline re-licensing. Though the reasons foster parents leave the system vary from home to home, ,there is one universal indicator: "Lack of support is the biggest reason foster parents leave the Isystem," Foster Parent David Hall said in a 2006 interview . "We're trained how to deal with (Children' s behaviors one way, but in reality, there's nothing you learned that can help you deal ��n�� „,,,ith those problems." 5