Collaboration With Health Services

When health and child welfare services agencies collaborate, they contribute to the development of a system of care that provides for the multiple needs of the children, youth, and family they serve. This section, which includes State and local examples, describes multidisciplinary approaches to interagency collaborations designed to improve services to children and their families.

Health Care Issues for Children and Adolescents in Foster Care and Kinship Care
Council On Foster Care, Adoption, and Kinship Care, Committee On Adolescence, & Council On Early Childhood (2015)
American Academy of Pediatrics, 136(4)
Offers information on the unique health needs of children and youth in out-of-home care, barriers to adequate health care services in foster care; the importance of coordinating care and services; and recommendations for improved health care information gathering and practice, advocacy at the system level, and health care coordination and management with the foster care agency/caseworker and child’s caretaker. 

Healthy Foster Care America
American Academy of Pediatrics
Offers information, materials, and tools to improve health services for youth in the foster care system, including advocacy materials for physicians; information on health models, programs, and projects for youth; State Medicaid provider directories; and primary care tools for health care professionals to learn about a child or youth’s background, facilitate communication and collaboration, and more.

Improving Child Well-Being: Strengthening Collaboration Between the Child Welfare and Health Care Systems (PDF - 709 KB)
Zlotnik, Scribano, Wood, & Noonan (2014)
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s PolicyLab & Safe Place 
Offers strategies and guidance for strengthening the collaboration between child welfare professionals and medical providers from child protection investigations to out-of-home placement and after reunification. The brief explains the expanded health and well-being requirements for children in out-of-home care and highlights promising jurisdictions.

Standards of Excellence for Child Welfare Services
Child Welfare League of America 
Presents principles and practices for providing quality health-care services to children in out-of-home care.

(Back to Top)

State and local examples

Care4Kids Program
Wisconsin Department of Health Services
Details a partnership between the Wisconsin Department of Health Services and the Department of Children and Families that offers integrated and comprehensive health services for children and youth in out-of-home care. The program coordinates with other systems that provide health and development services, such as county-funded mental health services and the local school system, to ensure cross-system coordination and proper transition planning.

Health Passport - A Guide to Medical Services at CPS
Texas Department of Family and Protective Services
Provides information on an electronic database of a child or youth in foster care’s health data—including diagnoses, gaps in care, doctor and dentist visits, hospital stays, prescriptions and shot records—so that important medical information can be shared across placements and with relevant medical personnel in  a timely manner.

Making Medicaid Work for Children in Child Welfare: Examples from the Field (PDF - 821 KB)
Center for Health Care Strategies, Inc. (2013)
Provides State examples of strategies to ensure children and youth in foster care have access to physical and behavioral health care.

Program Overview
California Department of Health Services
Explains the Health Care Program for Children in Foster Care that staffs county child welfare service agencies and probation departments with public health nurses to meet the medical, mental, and developmental needs of children and youth in out-of-home care and juvenile justice placements across California.

(Back to Top)