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Caring for Special Needs Children

A new program to help foster parents in West Virginia cope with children who have special needs holds enormous promise for youngsters who, ironically, sometimes don’t get help because they are most in need of it.

State Department of Health and Human Resources officials have announced what they call a “therapeutic foster care program.” The idea is to place children who otherwise would have gone to residential treatment facilities with families, instead.

Three tiers of placements for children are involved in the program. The first level is for youngsters who require little specialized care. Tier two is for those who need some treatment, while the third level is “intensive treatment foster care.”

Many children who find themselves wards of the state have special needs. Some are coping with  physical, mental or emotional challenges that make it difficult for foster parents to help them. The new program gives foster parents help handling those needs.

Simply warehousing special needs children in treatment facilities is undesirable for many reasons. Placing them in homes with caring foster parents is a much more desirable solution.

The new program seems aimed at ensuring more prospective foster parents are able to provide such care. It also should encourage more people eager to help children to become foster parents.

But foster homes often are only way stations for youngsters who for one reason or another cannot be left with biological mothers and/or fathers. The goal is permanent placement, either back with biological parents or with adoptive moms and dads.

State officials should remember that ensuring special needs children have foster parents capable of hosting them is only a beginning. Training and support is needed by many biological parents who want their children back, and by those who adopt children. That needs to be part of the package, too.

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