CHARLEE Family Care group homes were developed in order to provide quality long-term therapeutic foster care for adjudicated dependent children between the ages of ten and seventeen. Our children have had significant histories of abuse and neglect and have experienced multiple placements within the current foster/institutional childcare system. All these children have exhibited an inability to succeed in that system. Our referrals are taken directly from various Social Service Agencies such as: DCF, The Case Review Committee, The Court, and the Family Service Planning Team (FSPT), and are then screened for appropriate placement with the CHARLEE Family Care Program. We serve a population of young children and adolescents who, in the past, have been considered "hard-to-place" and have experienced considerable upheaval in their early history. Ideally, these youngsters may live with us until they reach the age of majority and are able to live independently.
As of this time, the CHARLEE Program owns and operates five family care homes, housing six children per house, in a family style living arrangement. In January 1991, our apartment style Pre-Independent Living Program became operational, housing additional eight older adolescents. Rather than hiring staff who work for a day or week shift and then return to their own homes and families, CHARLEE employs family care parents who will live in our family care group homes on a full-time basis and assume the role of mother and father for children who have never experienced an appropriate family setting. They are expected to provide our children with the love, nurturance and structure needed to help them develop into responsible adults. The CHARLEE model differs from the traditional therapeutic design in that our family care parents, who are with the children on a daily basis, are seen as the primary agent of change. Our case managers, psychological staff, program aides, secretaries, fiscal personnel and even the director, only serve as a support system to the family care parents who work with the children on a day-to-day basis. Similarly, therapists, counselors and other professionals take a "backstage" role to our parents. Treatment plans, which are developed by the case manager, therapist and family care parents and are overseen by the director, focus on involving the children in appropriate educational, recreational, vocational and, when appropriate, therapeutic services. This approach is truly holistic in nature and focuses on the whole child. However, the primary focus remains that of establishing a healthy parent-child relationship between the family care parents and the child. In essence, the model is a rather simple one. It assumes that if you take a child who has repeatedly experienced negative involvement with adults, authority figures and the institutions at large and place him in a good home, in a decent neighborhood with wholesome surroundings, appropriate school programs, recreational activities, vocational training, and normalizing life supplemented with individual, group or family counseling by our family care therapist in an effort to incorporate all aspects of a child's life in the process of normalization.
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