In a controlled study, the efficacy and effectiveness of a Foster Individualized Assistance Program (FIAP) will be evaluated for its ability to stabilize the placements and improve the emotional/behavioral adjustment of foster children at high risk for severe emotional disturbance (SED). This study will confront an overtaxing need to provide mental health and substance abuse services to foster children at risk of SED. It will address an essential part of Florida's five-year state plan for children's mental health and will facilitate the achievement of two of the State's CASSP goals: family participation and individualized systems of mental health care. The project will establish and evaluate the effectiveness of FIAP's empowered Mental Health Intervention Specialist, who will serve as each child's therapeutic case manager and home preservationist, coordinating mental health services, conducting assessments, and providing home-based support, training, and counseling to both foster children and their foster parents, as needed. The Specialist will also secure mental health and related community services, using flexible funds to purchase wraparound services essential to each child's emotional growth and stability. The project's study will be conducted in both urban and rural areas, where FIAP will serve approximately 70 children. Clients receiving these individualized mental health services will be randomly selected within each area. In addition to having been abused, criteria for selection will include foster placement instability, multi-agency needs, and behavioral/emotional problems disruptive enough to suggest movement to more restrictive residential and/or school placement, and which place the child at risk of SED. The effects and efficacy of FIAP in serving high risk foster children will be determined by assessments of each child's: 1) stability in foster placement; direction and level of restrictiveness of any placement change; 2) clinical/developmental progress, as evidenced through valid behavioral, emotional, educational, and family adjustment measures; and 3) community behavior measures, such as school truancy and arrests. The study's hypotheses predict that the FIAP treatment group will experience greater stability of foster placement, and grater improvement in emotional/behavioral adjustment than the high risk children, who will continue to receive standard mental health treatment in foster care. The results will help Florida establish more effective community based, non- residential, mental health interventions than those currently used.
