Louisville and Kentucky Foster Care Services

The Kentucky Foster Care and Adoption Program is state program and is responsible for finding foster homes for children in Louisville, Kentucky. They are open 24 hours a day for intake of children and can usually place them in homes immediately, although sometimes children may sometimes have to stay at The Home of the Innocents or The Shelter House until morning if they are taken from a dangerous situation in the middle of the night.

Usually children are brought in for foster care by police officers or social workers after being taken from a dangerous or unhealthy environment. Leading reasons for taking children from their families are domestic violence situations, arrest of their parents, medical or educational neglect, or sexual abuse.

The Kentucky Foster Care and Adoption Program finds homes for newborns and children up to the age of 18- years-old. They try to keep siblings together, although they try to limit the number of children in a foster home to 5, including the foster parents' natural children. Newborns are placed in what is called a "concurrent" home, which is a foster home with a long term goal of adoption.

The goal of the Kentucky Foster Care and Adoption Program is always reunification with the child's natural parents, but this only happens if the parent makes the changes necessary to regain custody. A judge may terminate their parental rights if the parents do not make changes necessary to regain custody of their children, which means the child will be placed for adoption.

A representative from the Kentucky Foster Care and Adoption Program said that they are always in need of foster parents. Anyone interested in being a Louisville foster parent can call 502-595-KIDS. They will be sent an information packet and will be invited in for an orientation. The potential foster parents will be fingerprinted and have a full FBI background check done on them. Afterwards, they will complete a training program. Once they have completed the process, potential foster parents are asked to fill out a form to indicate what type of children they would like to foster based on ethnicity, age, personality, etc. The Kentucky Foster Care and Adoption Program tries to stay within the criteria supplied.

Foster parents receive assistance from the state to help care for the child. The amount received depends on the age of the child. Children are given a Passport medical card to cover their medical expenses and an initial amount of money for clothing at certain stores. The families receive a monetary subsidy each month and are responsible for submitting a statement at the end of each month, detailing what the money was used for. The children also receive counseling while in the foster care program.