Methodist Foster Care is actively recruiting, training, certifying and supporting a state-wide network of Therapeutic Foster Care families in Louisiana who are providing family-based treatment in specially trained foster parent homes, for foster children with significant needs.

Therapeutic Foster Care is a family-based service which allows a child to live in a temporary home with trained parents while receiving intensive treatment from community-based providers of mental health services for their emotional and behavioral needs. TFC offers children supportive family settings where they can live until the natural family can be reunited or a permanent
placement can be arranged for the child.

“We don’t have enough foster homes. So, some children are displaced into group homes because we get adolescents and teenager,” said Shalonda Edmond, a recruiter for Methodist Foster Care. 

It’s an organization where all of the children that come in have some type of diagnosis, disability or behavior problem. “You have to try to understand them and learn them and try to work with them,” said Mary Batiste, a therapeutic foster care parent.

Batiste has fostered four children over the past seven years. She said that it’s a serious job she takes great pride in. “You have to give them boundaries also some rules and regulations that they may not be adjusted to,” Batiste added. 

Therapeutic foster care families begin with 36 training hours inside the home. Then 24-hour follow-ups throughout the year.

“Different children may get different services whether it’s in-home counseling, out home counseling or things of that nature,” said Edmond. 

 Anyone unsure about becoming a foster parent can start off as a respite, who takes over for the dominant foster care parent during a short period of time. 

MFC, Lafayette staff are; Chiara Mouton, Damon Lowrey, Brenna Spence and Sheri Rick (Child Placement Workers), Rick Dawes (Supervisor), Shalonda Edmond (Recruiter), Wilda Doyle (AA)

For more information about Methodist Foster Care or for information on becoming a Therapeutic Foster Parent,  click here, or call 337-347-9729.