October 27, 2021

With about 30,000 children across Texas in foster care – and 8,000 in Harris County alone – Texas Children’s Foster Care Clinic has played an important role in supporting and caring for this particularly vulnerable population since it opened in 2017.

“In collaboration with our physicians, nurse practitioners, social workers, and many other partners, we are able to support our foster families with medical and mental health assessments, care coordination, and assessments for signs of abuse/neglect,” wrote Dr. Rachael Keefe in a blog post recently featured on Texas Children’s website.

The post also includes a testimonial from Diane Kaulen, a senior community initiative coordinator for Public Health Pediatrics at Texas Children’s, who shares what inspired her family to open their home to a child who didn’t have a family.

“Every day, I have two goals with my son,” Kaulen said. “Did I do the best I could to make a connection with him, and did I continue to show up for him? No matter how challenging the day is, if I can say yes to those two questions, I feel like I did my best for him, for my other children, my family and myself.”

For more on our Foster Care Clinic, check out the blog.

January 31, 2017

2117DrGreeley175Dr. Christopher Greeley, chief of the new section of Public Health Pediatrics at Texas Children’s, has been awarded a 2017 Texas Medical Center Health Policy Institute grant from the TMC Foundation to study the medical and mental health care needs of children in foster care in Texas.

As part of this multi-center study in collaboration with Texas Children’s Chief Quality Officer Dr. Angelo Giardino, Greeley and his colleagues will perform a systematic review of the current knowledge of medical and mental health implications to children in foster care and identify the obstacles and successes these children have in receiving medical and mental care in Greater Houston. Following an analysis of this data, the team will develop national policy and practice recommendations to ensure children within the foster care system in Texas receive high quality medical and mental health care.

Children from representative sites across Greater Houston will be recruited for this study. These include children currently in foster care from the CPS clinic and community and Texas Children’s clinical sites as well as those children who have aged out or transitioned out of the foster care system. In addition to recruiting from these clinical sites, Greeley and his team will collaborate with community organizations that work with foster children to arrange focus group interviews of children and adolescents. Semi-structured interviews will also be conducted with current and past foster parents, and medical and mental health providers who provide care to foster children across Greater Houston.

“Our study will provide insight on what gaps currently exist in data regarding children in foster care, both at the level of clinical care and more broadly, for payers and policy makers,” said Greeley, the study’s principal investigator. “Our findings will help influence clinical policies regarding the implementation of care models for children in foster care and refine CPS policies so that services can better align with the needs of this population. Also, by providing data on the mental health care needs of this population, we hope our work will help improve Texas Medicaid reimbursement rates to enhance access to care.”

Besides Texas Children’s and Baylor College of Medicine, other institutions participating in this study include researchers from the University of Texas at Houston and Rice University.