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United for Families, Foster Parent Mentor Program, Children's Services Advisory Committee C. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION (Entire Section C, 1 — 6, not to exceed two pages) 1 . List Priority Needs area addressed, The support of those in need of special assistance. 2. Briefly describe program activities including location of services. The program objective is to retain foster parents in Indian River County and decrease the number of disruptions to local foster children. To achieve this, UFF will hire one Indian River County mentor from a pool of qualified, veteran foster parents. The mentor will receive $500 monthly in return for offering group and in-home support to new foster parents. The mentor will receive 15 hours of Certified Behavior Analyst training. The Department of Children and Families will provide the training at UFF headquarters in Port St. Lucie. A foster parent coordinator will oversee the program, supervise mentors and provide additional training that will help mentors identify local resources. Children' s Services Advisory Committee funding will be used to fund this position. Each mentor will be expected to attend all Alliance and Foster Parent Association meetings, assist in the training of new foster parents and meet regularly with the foster parent coordinator. In Indian River County, group activities will take place at the UFF location in Vero Beach or at UFF headquarters in Port St. Lucie, while in-home services will be provided throughout the county. The mentor will be assigned to new foster parents as they are licensed. They will assist in troubleshooting problems, identifying and coordinating community resources, and guiding foster parents through the system. They will serve the general foster care community in the 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? Mentors will monitor all phone calls and record all activity with foster parents. The foster parent coordinator will file reports of all activity, track problems and requests and monitor mentor responsiveness and overall program success. Mentors will be available to all foster parents for the duration of their service. Exit interviews with foster parents who leave the system will indicate program responsiveness. 3 . 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: 3