When children need immediate placement, agencies often struggle to find options quickly. Children may end up in group homes, offices overnight, or inappropriate placements.
Create dedicated emergency placement options to make sure every child has a safe place to go immediately.
How to do this
Choose families to be on call after hours
The number of available beds in your database is different from how many will pick up the phone. Ask foster families to sign up to be on call during specific shifts when they might get an emergency placement call. If this is on a volunteer basis, do your best to work with their schedules and preferences. Put these preferences into your placement data.
Provide incentive payments for being on call and accepting any child during off-hours. This can motivate more families to sign up for emergency availability.
Create dedicated emergency homes
Some foster homes are particularly well-suited to supporting emergency placement for short stays. Create a specific license or license designation for emergency homes.
Set clear expectations, including the following:
- When they need to answer the phone
- Whether they can reject placements
- Whether they must commit to keeping a placement for a certain length of time
- Specific responsibilities, like clothing or transportation
Provide trauma-informed training tailored for short-term, emergency placements to help families manage the emotional intensity of crisis placements.
Consider offering on-call stipends even when they don’t receive a placement. Offer higher rates when a child or youth is placed with them. This helps to maintain a reliable pool of emergency families.
Limit emergency placement lengths to 7 days, and ideally not more than 2 or 3 days. The goal is just to have enough time to identify and reach kin, or find a well-matched foster family.
Start transition planning within 24 to 48 hours after the child or youth is placed. This ensures that they move to their best long-term placement option as quickly as possible.
Use short-term emergency shelter homes strategically
Placing children who are new to foster care in short-term emergency homes can give you time to find and prepare kin caregivers. It also allows you to address basics like clothing, hygiene, medical exams, and other assessments. As long as these placements are brief and used to give the child the best possible placement, emergency homes can be a valuable tool.
This strategy in action
Hawaii identifies foster caregivers who will take non-infant placements at any hour. They are paid a monthly stipend.
Indiana provides a higher per diem rate in exchange for specific commitments:
- You can only say no twice every quarter.
- You're open to taking children ages birth to 18.
- You will answer the phone in the middle of the night.
- You will maintain placement for up to 7 days.
Montgomery County, MD asks foster families to commit to being on call for 1 or 2 weeks. They can generally specify their own availability.
Michigan has transitional placement providers, which is a contract with current licensed foster parents. These homes have preferences, but can't decline a placement within those preferences. They must keep the placement for 2 to 4 weeks. They are paid $100 a day during placement plus $245 a month to keep the bed open when they don't have a child there.
Rhode Island has an Emergency Response Program where some families are paid a $15 stipend per day in exchange for being on call. If they get a call, they have a no-reject, no-eject policy for 14 days. These families are for children under the age of 12. There is a second program, Emergency Response X, for children age 12 and older, with lighter requirements.
New Hampshire foster families can earn a credential for emergency and crisis care. Emergency care means a child who is already in care and their placement disrupts. Families receive a higher stipend for up to 10 days. Crisis care means a child who needs to come into care during off-hours. They receive a higher stipend for up to 5 days.