UMCF Information

CHOICES, Inc. was founded in 1986 as a private non-profit Foster Care agency and has grown to include Independent Living, and Home-Based Services. In our Family & Treatment Foster Care we recruit and license great foster parents and train them annually to ensure the best possible care for the foster youth placed in their homes. Additional supportive services include weekly contact with a Social Worker, who is also on-call twenty four hours a day to provide assistance to the foster caregivers as needed. CHOICES, Inc. has a very unique Independent Living (IL) program. We offer former foster care youth ages 17-21 a tremendous opportunity to live in an apartment in a safe community and gain true independence. The IL program empowers our youth by teaching them self-sufficiency skills, encouraging them to maintain employment and to pursue their education goals, and guiding them in the development of decision-making. Our Home-Based Services (HBS) program focuses on Family Conflict Resolution and Youth Transition Services. Our ultimate goal is for the child to remain in their biological home, and we have more than a 90% success rate. For family conflict, we work directly with families experiencing parent/child conflicts, especially situations in which the teen is at imminent risk of leaving or being removed from the home. And for youth transition, we diligently work to help a child who has been through the juvenile court system successfully transition back into their community.