Foster Care
We walk alongside youth and families facing instability,
providing vital support.
From safe, loving foster homes that offer sanctuary, to crisis intervention and early intervention for those at risk of entering the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, our Foster Care programs create pathways to healing and success.
Foster Care
Consider opening your heart and your home to a child in need.
Foster Care provides temporary homes for children and adolescents who have been removed from their parents due to abuse and neglect. Services are given to the children, their natural parents, and current foster parents. The goal of this program is to help all foster children find permanency in their lives. Sometimes this looks like reunification with their natural parents, other times it looks like adoption or guardianship with loving, capable caretakers, and other times it looks like a transition into self-sufficient young adulthood.
Our agency supports both traditional foster care and specialized foster care. Specialized foster care is designed for youth so traumatized by their life circumstances that they develop a number of chronic behavioral and emotional problems or for youth with medical needs and require extra attention. The program provides intensive treatment services for clients while working closely with the foster family to create stability and support. Most clients in this program are teenagers with special education and additional therapeutic service requirements.
If you would like to explore opening your heart and your home to a child in foster care and becoming a foster family, learn more here, email Andrea Cordle, [email protected], or call 309-210-1901.
Children’s Home Association of Illinois is an Illinois Licensed Child Welfare Agency. License number #004259-14.
Intact Family Services
Children need their families and families need their children.
Intact Family Services is a voluntary program designed to keep each family intact when the threat of separation is real. This program works with at-risk families who have been referred for continuing assistance and monitoring following a child abuse and neglect investigation with the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). The goals of this program are to enable children to remain safely in their home, make reasonable efforts to keep families together, address and resolve the issues that place the children at risk, and to avoid having children separated from their family.
Our caseworkers will help your family develop a short-term, agreed upon plan to make the changes that will help keep your children safe. They will act as a support system and resource without judgement, working to ensure all children in the home are safe and supported.
Comprehensive Community-Based Youth Services (CCBYS)
Crisis intervention for at-risk youth who have nowhere to go.
We provide round-the-clock care and crisis intervention for youth ages 10-17 in Peoria County who have run away, been “locked out” by a parent or caregiver, or who refuse to return home after coming in contact with law enforcement. We are also able to help youth who demonstrate delinquent or at-risk behavior, without having experienced a “lock out.” The program works to preserve or reunify the living situation to keep the family intact with a holistic approach to a healthy home environment. Services are available for up to three months and may include crisis counseling, mediation, emergency short-term placement, individual/family/group counseling, recreation, skill building, advocacy, and referrals to other community support services.
For more information or to make a referral, please contact Mark Cook, [email protected], or call 309-687-7524.
Mental Health Juvenile Justice (MHJJ)
Support services for youth in the juvenile justice system.
Our MHJJ program addresses the mental health, mood disorder, or psychiatric needs of youth between the ages of 10-17 in Peoria County who have been involved in the juvenile justice system or are at-risk of being involved with the juvenile justice system. Our staff help with case coordination and referrals to appropriate mental health or psychiatric consultations to help the youth keep themselves safe, heal from past trauma, and stay out of the juvenile justice system. This voluntary program can last for up to six months and referrals typically come from probation officers, court officials, mental health providers, Juvenile Detention Center staff, or other professionals involved in the youth’s life.
For more information or to make a referral, please contact Sharon Armstrong, [email protected] or call 309-687-7525.
Leaders of Tomorrow
Building character and leadership skills with high school students.
Leaders of Tomorrow (LOT) is a youth development program at Manual High School in Peoria designed to provide at-risk students with support services to foster a successful high school experience.
Students participate in the program for all four years of high school and earn financial incentives that can be applied after graduation to pay for post-secondary educational and vocational expenses. Our staff works with the students on personal development and character-building experiences that promote positive choices, reduction of at-risk behavior, academic support, community service, and career aspirations.
“Leaders of Tomorrow helped me take my studies in high school seriously. Being around my program peers, we were able to help keep each other focused on graduating from high school. I continued my education and was able to get a Political Science degree.”
— Leaders of Tomorrow graduate
