working with this population of children is definitely a life style change, which is rewarding at times as well as profoundly challenging.

La Familia works hard to stay connected with the TFC families, who span a 60-mile radius. We have reinstituted our TFC newsletter as a way to communicate ideas and information that influence our world. We are facilitating the “brown bag” lunch at La Familia every payday in order to again provide an opportunity to come together and share ideas.

The La Familia TFC families are interested in resurrecting the NM Treatment Foster Parent Association and are actively recruiting families. They are poised to advocate for the integrity of TFC services as it comes under “attack” by legislators who are limited in their understanding of this valuable service and are likely to cut back funds.

La Familia continues to be in the forefront of collaboration with other TFC agencies as well as the Children Youth and Families Department with the purpose of gaining greater understanding of each other and to develop systems that serve us better. La Familia is an active member of the CYFD/TFC training collaborative. The training collaborative has developed three CORE trainings, which are conducted on a quarterly basis in order to orient new CYFD/TFC staff to the intricacies of both systems.

La Familia has been an active participant in an adoption transition task group with CYFD, which has developed guidelines for transitioning children from Treatment

Foster Care to adoption. The guidelines were completed and were presented to the County Office Managers of CYFD and the Executive Directors of TFC agencies on July 25, 2003. These guidelines were accepted by John Rinaldi, then CYFD Division Director, and are now in operation throughout the state.

During the last fiscal year the Treatment Foster Care program admitted 44 children, discharged 39 children, and 77% of discharged children moved to a lower level of care or to their permanent home. La Familia assisted with the adoption process for seven children in the first quarter, four in the second quarter, eight children in the third quarter and one in the fourth quarter.

Fourteen of these adoptions finalized over the last year, and La Familia provided the post placement services for twelve placements, four of which were Treatment Foster Parent conversions to adoptive homes. La Familia assisted with eight reunifications over the last fiscal year: two in the first quarter, two in the second quarter, one in the third quarter and three in the fourth quarter.

TFC, like all La Familia departments, completed the self-study for COA accreditation, and the site visit was conducted September 7-10, 2003. This process gave us the opportunity to closely examine all of our current systems, to make improvements, and to update our procedures manual.

The Treatment Foster Care program is looking forward to further growth over the next year, as we have generated new ideas for quality improvement and program expansion. We continue to operate under the belief, as articulated by Frederick Douglass, “It is far easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”