DCS recruits foster families who provide safe and supportive homes in which the children's emotional, physical, and social needs can be met. For some children and youth who come into foster care with significant emotional or behavioral problems, specialized treatment programs are used, such as kinship foster homes, shared homes, foster homes for the medically fragile, emergency foster homes, and residential treatment facilities. The goal here is to help the child function appropriately in a community setting. Foster care is a temporary service until the family and, in some cases, the child can address the problems which made placement necessary. When parents cannot or will not make their home safe for the child's return, other permanent options are sought, including adoption, or independent living for older youth.
Children enter the foster care system for a variety of reasons.
A child might need protection from abuse or neglect or they may have health, behavioral, or emotional problems requiring treatment not reasonable accessible to many parents.