Intensive Foster Care Services (IFCS)
NYAP’s Intensive Foster Care Services (IFCS) are grounded in a structured, family-centered team process that delivers individualized and coordinated care 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 clinician, a bachelor’s level behavioral specialist, and a paraprofessional support specialist.
FCS 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.
How we’re different
Using evidence-based, trauma-informed interventions is essential to positive outcomes on behalf of children and youth served. Evidence-based strategies are embedded throughout IFCS and are implemented by appropriately trained and certified employees. Practices and interventions include:
Problem Solving Skills Training (PSST)
Parent Management Training (PMT)
Trust Based Relational Interventions (TBRI)
Motivational Interviewing (MI)
Cognitive Behavioral Treatment (CBT)
Dialectical Behavioral Treatment (DBT)
We are also proud to offer assessment and consultation using the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT) within the scope of IFCS. 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.
Populations Served
IFCS 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.
IFCS Goals
Intensive 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 IFCS 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
