We have wrap-around services at CMFCAA where we help foster, adoptive, and kinship families. Here is a brief overview of each program.
Respite
CMFCAA’s Respite Program provides Odyssey events are four-hour drop off events that provide a fun evening for foster children that give caregivers a chance to rest & rejuvenate!
CMFCAA’s Emergency Respite Exchange Program collects willing respite providers in order to help families seeking respite be matched with a provider that would best meet the needs of the children in care.
Family Development
CMFCAA’s Family Development Program can help you navigate the process of becoming a foster or adoptive parent, whether you’re open to a long-term or short-term commitment. All of CMFCAA’s programs are geared toward strengthening, recruiting and retaining quality foster and adoptive homes for our most vulnerable children who have suffered from neglect and abuse.
Direct Services
CMFCAA’s Direct Services Program helps with any physical need a foster, adoptive, guardianship, or kinship family may have from backpacks full of age-appropriate items in our Begin Again Backpacks, fire extinguishers and smoke alarms, clothing and more in our Trunks, to beds/dressers for a child in their care.
Family Advocacy
CMFCAA’s Family Advocacy Program offers advocates to help families navigate the subsidy system, help families find the help they need when struggling to understand how best to help children that is struggling in schools, mental health and the court system. We will walk with these families in helping them find the resources that they need to be successful in understanding the complexities of these issues. We will find them mental health agencies that will teach the family coping skills to help the family overcome the challenges that come with the trauma from the foster care, adoption, and guardianship has on the family.
If you are looking for extra support with like-minded individuals, consider joining our foster & adoptive support group.
Because caring for a relative or kinship child who is biologically not your own can be complex and oftentimes challenging. CMFCAA’s Kinship Navigator Program is designed to assist kinship caregiver families throughout Central Missouri in a variety of ways that help increase placement stability in both formal and informal situations.
If you are looking for extra support with like-minded individuals, consider joining our kinship support group.
Placement Preservation
The essence of CMFCAA’s Placement Preservation Program is to mitigate the disruptions in adoptive placements across our 24 counties. We often encounter foster, adoptive, and kinship families who are not always ready to face the complex trauma histories these children carry with them. We aim to help better educate and prepare those families. Our specialists utilize the innovative OpenMind® Theory developed by Dr. Monica Jackman, combined with trauma-informed cognitive-behavioral interventions.
Free Rides with New Growth Transit
If you are a resident we serve in Morgan, Camden, Benton, and Dallas Counties, then you may qualify for a free ride-sharing program in partnership with New Growth Transit.
Community Connection Youth Project® (CCYP®)
CMFCAA’s CCYP® program provides individualized case management for youth who have left or are aging out of the foster care system. The CCYP® program is designed to be a voluntary program allowing youth to opt in or out of any portion of the program. This service allows program staff to help clients accomplish a variety goals that will maximize success and limit negative outcomes.
Special Requests
Sometimes a client has a request that does not exactly fall under one of our other services. CMFCAA will do their best to fill the monitory or material need for your family.
Special requests are considered and voted on at the monthly CMFCAA Board of Directors meeting.
30 Days to Family®
CMFCAA’s 30 Days to Family® is an intense, short-term intervention referral program developed by the Foster & Adoptive Care Coalition to firstly increase the number of children placed with relatives when they enter the foster care system; and finally, ensure natural and community supports are in place to promote stability for the child. The program model features two major elements: family finding and family support interventions.
A Family For Me
CMFCAA has launched “A Family for Me,” a new program to secure permanent homes for Missouri’s adoptable children. This program will feature a monthly 2-minute TV segment on KMIZ-TV 17, spotlighting a child from the Missouri Heart Gallery.
CMFCAA will partner with KMIZ, the Missouri Children’s Division, and The Missouri Heart Gallery, which features photos and profiles of adoptable children.
Extreme Family Finding®
CMFCAA’s Extreme Family Finding® program works to find families for the youth who have been in care for awhile, large sibling sets, the children with extra medical or psychological needs. They’re the cases considered difficult or “lost causes.” EFF® works with the clients by creating a family tree, contacting and educating family and kin, working to identify permanent adoptive resources and other sources of relational permanency for children and youth, and wrapping concierge support and post-placement services around those identified families.
