Supporting Stronger Families & Youth

Our Family Support Services provide programs designed to empower families, children, and youth through individualized, culturally-responsive treatment and family-based care, helping them to develop strong life and mental health skills so they can meet their goals of reunification and/or move from system dependence to self-sufficiency.

Services: 

  • Help children and youth heal and stabilize in a family setting
  • Help parents/caregivers develop stronger skills to meet their families’ needs
  • Assist families in developing their own community-based support systems
  • Provide therapeutic, family-based foster care for children and youth needing out-of-home care
  • Support youth and families during their Foster-Adoption journey

Wraparound

We began providing Wraparound in San Luis Obispo County on July 1, 2000 in partnership with the San Luis Obispo County’s Departments of Social Services, Behavioral Health and Probation. This unique program delivers intensive support services that “wrap-around” a youth and their family (biological and non-biological), meeting their needs, helping them to set and achieve goals, connecting them with resources, helping them build a community-based support system, and, ultimately, providing them with mental health support to stabilize behaviors and/or reduce their risk factors to strengthen the family unit and divert the youth from being placed in a more restrictive environment. Wraparound is family-centered, strength-based, needs-driven and solutions-focused, and integrates a family’s unique culture into their individualized treatment plan. These services can be provided in a parent/caregiver’s home, a foster home, a transitional host family, or in a transitional living apartment setting with a Residential Advisor. Since the program’s inception, we have served 1,177 children/youth and their families.

2021/2022 Impact

Youth/Families received services

%

of youth stabilized and remained in a family setting, and were no longer at risk for a higher level of care

Families successfully achieved their program goals and graduated services

Sunnys Story

Sunny was no stranger to change. Over the past several years, his mom and he had experienced the instability of homlessness--moving between shelters, friends’ homes, and their car to sleep. Sunny loved his mom deeply, but knew, even at 11, that her ongoing substance use meant he’d never have his own bedroom in a house that he could call home. Nor would he get to attend school like other kids his age or even know for sure when he’d eat again. But even when he was placed into foster care following his mom's drug overdose, Sunny wasn’t sure his life would improve--and he again found himself wondering what tomorrow and the next day would really bring.

Read more

2021-2022 Impact

Youth Served

%

of them are continuing their efforts in CVA

%

of them were stepped down to CVA After-Care Services

Coastal Valley Academy (CVA)

Coastal Valley Academy is a custody commitment program operated in San Luis Obispo County’s Juvenile Hall for youth ages 14-17 as an alternative to group home or institutional placement. In partnership with SLO County’s Probation Department, FCNI facilitates skills groups, mental health support services, and intensive case management for CVA youth, in conjunction with the County Office of Education which provides educational services. CVA aims to reduce youth recidivism by helping youth heal and develop stronger coping and communications skills, establish natural support systems outside of care, and learn critical life skills for adult independence. Since the program’s inception in 2017, FCNI has served 72 youth to achieve one or more of the following:

  • Diversion from a more restrictive placement
  • Family and school stability
  • Reach their individualized program goals

Intensive Therapeutic Foster Care

Since our inception in 1987, we have been committed to providing the highest quality of family-based out-of-home care with families who are highly trained in caring for the most high-needs children and youth impacted by trauma. Since our inception, services have grown to include the following programs:

Emergency Shelter Care and Emergency Support Services*

provides immediate foster care available 24 hours per day, seven days per week for abused, neglected or disrupted youth. *FCNI also provides support services to youth placed in County foster homes or another emergency shelter placement in order to ensure their safety and care.

Intensive Services Foster Care (ISFC)

provides intensive clinical services with specialty trained foster families for youth with high, complex needs. We also provide Wraparound Foster Care which similarly to ISFC provides a highly structured behavioral management system to support children/youth experiencing a crisis and/or the impact of trauma as they work to reunify with family, or transition from a higher level of care to a more long term placement.

Foster-Adoption Care

provides adoption-eligible youth with highly-trained families, adding an additional layer to our ongoing efforts to move our foster youth towards permanent family-based homes within their own local community. 

Since our inception, we have served 5,482 foster children/youth in one of our Therapeutic Foster Care programs, ensuring their safety and stability, while helping them move toward permanency through Independent living, family reunification, guardianship or adoption whenever possible. To date, we have successfully facilitated 13 youth being adopted out of foster care. And we have served another 258 youth through emergency shelter support, ensuring youth experiencing an acute crisis are safely housed.

2021/2022 Therapeutic Foster Care Impact

Full-Time Foster Families

Part-Time Respite Provider

Foster Children/Youth Served

%

of which stabilized in care, making improvements in school, and in their emotional health and life skills

Children/Youth received Emergency Support Services which ensured their safety*

Hispanic teenage girl and her grandmother looking at a smartphone at home and smiling

Jensen's Story

Jensen wasn’t a kid used to getting or giving second chances. He lost his parents when he was young and spent most of his childhood bouncing between extended family members, family friends and foster homes. He endured physical and emotional abuse from people he was told he was supposed to trust, so by the time he was in his teens, he didn’t trust anyone. By then, he’d become a ward of the state and his social worker wanted nothing more than to find him a safe and stable home. But Jensen wasn’t interested. Every time he was placed in a new home, he ran away as soon as he could, never giving a family a chance; never risking being hurt by adults again.

Read more

Zara's Story

Spending more of her short life in foster care than out, Zara had seen a lot of different out-of-home placements by the time she turned 13--Emergency Shelter, basic foster care and even a couple of group homes. As a young girl growing up, Zara experienced so much trauma, she expressed her pain and fear the only way she knew how--in violent outbursts and defiant behaviors, pushing all of the buttons and limits she could to demonstrate feelings she didn’t understand and didn’t want. When her latest placement in a group home was on the brink of failure, her team decided to place her in a Wraparound Foster Care Home; one where she would receive a great deal of structure, stability and one-on-one support from a highly trained foster parent. The hope was that Zara might respond better in home-based care than institutional.

Read more