Enhanced Foster Care Services (EFCS)
NYAP’s Enhanced Foster Care Services (EFCS) providers engage children and youth served in High-Fidelity Wraparound (HFW) to support placement stability, reduce the frequency and intensity of high acuity behaviors, enhance safety, and improve the overall well-being of children and youth served. Services are provided by a three-person team, including a master’s level supervisor, a master’s level team leader, and a bachelor’s level behavioral specialist.
EFCS incorporates high-quality, evidence-based, trauma-informed strategies for children and youth. As an essential element of programming, NYAP actively engages and supports primary families, kinship providers, and foster families as key treatment team members. Services strategically address each child or youth’s developmental, physical, social, emotional, cognitive, and cultural needs.
What makes us different?
Using evidence-based, trauma-informed interventions is essential to ensuring positive outcomes on behalf of children and youth served. Evidence-based strategies are embedded throughout EFCS and are implemented by appropriately trained and certified employees. Practices and interventions include:
Trust Based Relational Interventions (TBRI)
Motivational Interviewing (MI)
Cognitive Behavioral Treatment (CBT)
Dialectical Behavioral Treatment (CBT)
Applied Behavior Analytics (ABA)
We are also proud to offer assessment and consultation using the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT) within the scope of EFCS. Rather than focusing on a specific therapeutic technique, the NMT assessment enables providers to pinpoint key systems and regions in the brain that have been affected by adverse developmental experiences, guiding the selection and sequencing of interventions to increase program efficacy.
Finally, because research demonstrates that children and youth experience significantly less trauma and better outcomes when placed with a trusted adult with whom they have a preexisting positive relationship over stranger care, family finding is included as a component of EFCS when appropriate. By partnering with our referral sources, children and youth without an identified permanency plan are assisted in finding and engaging potential kinship caregivers to give them a chance at fewer placement disruptions and greater connection to their family and culture.
Populations Served
EFCS serves children and youth up to age 21, with an emphasis on teens 14-18. Youth served may reside in kinship, DCS-licensed, or other LCPA homes or be placed in NYAP homes. We provide services to youth with a variety of high-acuity behaviors.
What are the goals?
Enhanced Foster Care Services are designed to support children and youth with significant medical, mental, emotional, or behavioral needs living in out-of-home placement. The goals are to promote safety and stability while supporting the kinship or foster parents, develop their skill set to meet the needs of the referred child or youth, and ultimately transition the child or youth to permanency through an individualized array of assessments, treatment, and services. Youth referred for EFCS may include:
Youth leaving long-term residential or psychiatric treatment facilities
Youth with a history of foster care disruption
Youth with significant intellectual or developmental disabilities
Youth with significant medical challenges
Youth with a history of profound or complex trauma
Average Length
Services typically last six months to one year or until youth permanency is achieved.
