Missouri
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Pre-Service Training

The Children’s Division, Department of Social Services, is using a new statewide training program called the Missouri Caregiver and Adoption Resource Education (MO C.A.R.E.) curriculum, which is an adaptation of the National Training and Development Curriculum for Foster and Adoptive Parents (NTDC). All foster and adoptive families must complete this 30-hour training.

Relative caregivers who wish to become licensed must complete a nine-hour relative caregiver training.

Any family, relative or otherwise, who intends to adopt must complete an additional seven-hour training entitled Missouri Adoption Resource Curriculum (MO ARC).

Services Offered Through the State’s Post-Permanency Support Program

The Children’s Division contracts with three private agencies—FosterAdopt Connect, Foster & Adoptive Care Coalition, and the Central Missouri Foster Care and Adoption Association—to operate regional Family Resource Centers (FRCs) across the state. Each FRC must provide a set of core services to adoptive, foster, and kinship families. Some of the FRCs also offer additional services under their state contracts.

Services include:

Adoptive families receive the seven-hour training noted above. The FRCs can provide their services to families before finalization.

Each FRC offers parent or caregiver support groups in person or virtually. Topics and facilitation vary across the FRCs.

Each FRC offers support and/or training to help families navigate educational systems and address challenges their children are having in school.

Each FRC offers services to help families obtain respite care. Services vary by region, but include operating a respite exchange, hosting respite events, and making respite connections between families.

All FRCs share information with families, including Children’s Division policy changes and other key data for resource families. FRCs maintain social media accounts to provide outreach to adoptive and other families in the region. All FRCs provide individual referral and advocacy services to help families address concerns and find services, including healthcare, education, and other supports.

Two of the three FRCs offer in-home services. In the western region, families can access in-home behavioral intervention support. The Behavioral Interventionist (BI) program provides intensive one-on-one services to children who struggle with behavioral and emotional management. Behavioral Interventionists work with children on neuro-developmental activities that help to re-wire negative neuropathways in the brain. In the St. Louis area, families have access to in-home therapeutic supports for a period of 9 to 12 months. Through this program, caregivers are provided support, skills, validation, and psychoeducation to learn therapeutic parenting strategies. The individual advocacy services listed above may also be provided in the home.

Each FRC offers ongoing training for families and professionals on key issues in adoption, foster care, guardianship, and kinship care.

All FRCs organize periodic social and recreational activities for children and families.

FRCs provide funds and materials to help foster, adoptive, and kinship families with routine expenses, such as medical costs, activities expenses, childcare, legal fees, school supplies, transportation costs, and clothing. In addition to the FRC services, the Children’s Division provides financial support to help families cover the costs of needed residential treatment that is not covered by insurance.

For more information, visit https://dss.mo.gov/cd/frc/index.htm

Geographic Area Covered

The Children’s Division contracts with three agencies to provide services in all of the state’s six regions. As noted above, core services are offered statewide, but additional services are offered in some regions.

Eligible Population for the Overall Post-Permanency Program

  • All families who adopted from the state’s foster care system

  • All families who adopted through intercountry adoption

  • All families who adopted through private adoption

  • All families who adopted from foster care in other states, territories, or tribes

  • All families who have guardianship of a child from foster care

  • All families who have guardianship of child not through foster care

  • Kinship families who are not adoptive/guardianship parents

  • Other (listed below)

    • Foster parents

Cultural Responsiveness

Each FRC may offer different supports and services to meet the specific needs of their local community, including training or support groups addressing the needs of diverse families.

Outreach and Engagement

Adoptive and guardianship families receive information about the Family Resource Centers through a variety of methods:

  • Families are provided information and a brochure from their subsidy worker.
  • The annual letter to families receiving subsidy includes information about the FRCs. It also includes a brief survey to assess families’ well-being.
  • The Children’s Division publishes an electronic monthly newsletter for foster, adoptive, and guardianship families.
  • Each month, the Children’s Division provides the FRCs a list of all foster, adoptive, guardianship, or kinship families. The FRCs sends a welcome letter to the new families to share information about services.
  • Each FRC sends an annual letter about services to all families on the Children’s Division list.
  • FRCs also conduct their own outreach and other engagement strategies to families and report on these efforts to the state.

How the Post-Permanency Program Is Operated

  • Through contracts or grants with multiple private agencies that offer mostly the same set of services, each operating in a different region

Notes About Who Provides Which Service(s)

The Children’s Division contracts with three different agencies to operate the FRCs:

Adoption/Guardianship Assistance/Subsidy Review and Changes

State subsidy workers send a letter annually to adoptive and guardianship families requesting educational information and inquiring if any changes have occurred.

Adoptive and guardianship families may request changes to their adoption/guardianship assistance agreement at any time, in person or in writing. Modifications are prompted by changes in family circumstances or the child’s needs. Requests for assistance beyond the basic subsidy package require supporting documentation.

Tracking Adoption/Guardianship Discontinuity

The state does not change or alter a child’s or youth’s identification number assigned upon entering care after the finalization of an adoption or guardianship. Therefore, the state can quickly identify if a child or youth returns to care. The state publishes a quarterly report on this data. For those children and youth who are placed through private or intercountry adoptions, these are tracked by private child-placing agencies, which provide status reports to the Children’s Division.

Post-Permanency Program Spending (FY 2023)

  • more than $9 million

    Note: This funding includes services for foster, adoptive, guardianship, and kinship families served by Family Resource Centers.

Funding Sources for the Post-Permanency Program (FY 2023)

  1. State funds
  2. Title IV-E funds (including Prevention Services Grant Program/PSGP or IV-E training dollars)
  3. Adoption savings (reported on CB 496 Part 4 – Annual Adoption Savings Report)

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