In-Home services play an integral role in targeting resources and services that prevent entry into foster care and help children remain safely in their homes or with relative/kin caregivers. In-Home services work requires a skill set that focuses on family engagement, identifying individualized needs, creating and monitoring service plans and progress with families, while continually assessing safety, risk, and protective capacities - and enhancing broader protective factors.

In-Home services provide interventions and services to families that are based on the following principles:

• Address child safety and risk factors.
• Preserve families by maintaining children safely in their own homes or with relative/kin caregivers in their own communities.
• Prevent further abuse or neglect by strengthening the family’s capacity to protect and nurture their children.
• Interventions and services are provided in a manner to reduce or eliminate re-traumatization to children and families.
• Delivers interventions and services within the context of the family’s own community culture and the child’s current living arrangement.
• Engages children, youth, and families in the planning process while producing better outcomes of well-being, safety, and permanence.

To learn more information, please visit the State Department of Social Services website.