Pathways to Permanency

Our commitment to success and determination to build permanent connections for vulnerable youth remain central to uniting children with nurturing, stable, and committed families. Through various pathways to permanency youth can achieve lasting family bonds.

Explore the diverse services available to Resource Families that help support these permanent connections:

Short-Term, Safe Haven

Home Based Shelter Care (HBSC) provides a temporary safe haven (emergency care for up to 30 days) for youth of all ages in immediate need of care until a relative or long-term placement is found. HBSC resource families must be flexible, able provide a stable living environment, be available 24 hours a day, and help the youth feel safe and nurtured.

Respite provides short-term care to assist current resource Resource Families. Respite families are able to take in a youth, a few days at a time, to provide time for resource families to relax and take care of themselves.

Traditional Foster Care

Standard Treatment Foster Care (STFC) provides loving, supportive care for kids and teens while they await permanent homes. Services are provided primarily through approved Resource Families, who are trained, supervised, and supported by qualified program staff.

Foster to Adopt

Foster to Adopt: When determined as the best option for the youth by the courts, Resource Families may become an adoptive family through Concurrent Planning, an approach that seeks to shorten a youth’s stay in foster care by exploring more than one permanent family solution at a time. While returning a youth to their family of origin is the primary case plan for a youth in foster care, concurrent planning involves the parallel pursuit of an alternative permanency goal (i.e., adoption) that would best serve the youth in the event reunification is not possible.

Specialized Care

Complex Care offers a behavioral treatment alternative to residential placement for youth who require an intensive level of care. The goal of this program is to provide stabilization, effective treatment, and step-down transition planning so that a youth will be able to successfully transition to a less intensive level of care and achieve permanency.  

Intensive Services Foster Care (ISFC) serves youth who need a higher level of care, with support services in place. Our ISFC program provides crisis management training, monthly resource parent support groups, and a higher rate of reimbursement. 

Therapeutic Foster Care (TFC) is a type of mental health service that is provided by specially-trained Resource Parents, who are supported by a Stanford Sierra Youth & Families clinician. TFC provides a stable, nurturing, family-home environment combined with mental health services and structured therapeutic care for youth who require more intensive and frequent support than can be offered in traditional foster care. 

Kinship Support Services

Kinship Support Services helps kin and other non-related extended family members to navigate the Resource Family Approval process to support a specific foster youth known to them. Through the process, Kinship Support Services provides them with information, community resources, education, and other services focused on Kinship Care.