Expanding collaboration with DSS through foster care partnership

Health Care for the Homeless is expanding its relationship with the Baltimore City Department of Social Services (DSS) through a new partnership with the city’s foster care system.

By law, children entering foster care must have a medical exam within five days of entering the system. For years, a host of providers scattered across the city performed these exams. For the last two years, the Baltimore Child Abuse Center has conducted them. And starting this June, we will conduct them here at Health Care for the Homeless. We’re doing a soft launch that started this week with just a couple of appointments a day, and we will formally assume our new role at full capacity by July 1.

This new partnership is the latest in an expanding and ongoing relationship between Health Care for the Homeless and DSS that really launched in early 2016, when DSS stationed a fulltime DSS worker at our Fallsway location to streamline benefits enrollment for our clients.

On average, 100 children enter Baltimore’s foster care system each month. Of these, some have specialized care requirements and receive their initial medical exam elsewhere as a result. Those who are hospitalized at the time of entry into the system receive their medical exams at the hospital. Those who are victims of physical abuse receive their initial exams at the hospital emergency room. And those who are victims of sexual abuse receive their exams at the Baltimore Child Abuse Center. Here at Health Care for the Homeless, our pediatric and family providers will see the remaining 80 or so children that enter into foster care in Baltimore each month—approximately 20 children a week.

The purpose of these initial exams is to screen for urgent medical care needs, and while most of the children we see will reconnect with their medical homes after their exams here, some will stay on for primary care. Particularly for those who have multiple encounters within the foster care system, Health Care for the Homeless can be a source of continuity and stability.

“We are well suited to do this since the majority of these children are along the continuum of childhood neglect that we’re very used to seeing,” says Director of Pediatrics Lisa Stambolis. “We already had a very comfortable fit with DSS, because we’re already seeing children in the foster care system. This partnership really grew out of this natural collaboration.”