Community Based Programs (Specialized and Treatment Foster Care) for Children and Families
Address: 20651 W. Warren, Dearborn Heights, MI 48127
Phone: (313) 271-3050 Fax: (313) 371-6250
Contact Person: Michelle Howard ext.137
e-mail: mhoward@vistamaria.orgFocus of Programs: Vista Maria offers extensive continuum of community based care for emotionally challenged girls and boys in their home communities. These high-demand, rapidly growing programs enable children to achieve confidence and hope. A strict disciplinary academy, the Clara B. Ford Academy, opened in 2007 for girls within our intensive residential treatment programs and a second public school academy, Vista Meadows, for special needs boys and girls opens fall 2008.
Our community-based program continuum includes:
- General Foster Cate: provides a monthly case management services for Michigan children who have suffered abuse or neglect and are entering the system for the first time or have been stepped down from a more intensive program to prepare them for reunification with their birth parents or another permanent home.
- Specialized Foster Care: provides bi-weekly case management due to increased negative behaviors and poor normalization skills, and prepares Michigan children for reunification with their birth parents or another permanent home.
- Intensive Supportive Foster Care: is a collaborative treatment program for the Wayne County child welfare system and their severely emotionally disturbed children who are being stepped down from a psychiatric hospital, resident program and\or have a severe emotional disturbance disorder. Vista Maria and a collaborative partner provides in home services, training and support to the child, birth family and foster family to enable the child to thrive in the community. The goal is reunification with the birth parent or to place the child in a less intensive program.
- Treatment Foster Care: provides the same services as our Specialized Foster Care but is designed specifically for delinquent your supervised by Wayne County Care Management Organizations. Foster parents participate in additional training regarding at risk and high-risk youth regarding anger management and conflict resolution and substance abuse prevention. Licensed counselors, social workers or psychologists provide professional counseling services.
- Intensive Supportive Foster Care - (Severely Emotional Disturbed): provides very similar services as the Intensive Supportive Foster Care program, however this program is designed for Wayne County Juvenile Justice system teenage boys and girls who are severely emotionally disturbed. Vista Maria specifically recruits and trains foster parents to participate in the mental health treatment so that these disadvantaged children achieve greater independence toward young adulthood.
- Youth Assistance Program: for Dearborn Heights children, is designed to support the development of protective factors among teens identified by school counselors and law enforcement as being at high risk for serious delinquency. Individual and group sessions are designed to improve social and conflict resolution skills and also prevent drug abuse and other behaviors that may lead to high school drop out.