What is The Foster Care Center of Excellence?

The Foster Care Center of Excellence is a specialty practice within a pediatric clinic. The pediatric clinic provides a medical home for all the children served by the clinic, and this includes children and youth in foster and kinship care.

Children who have been displaced from their homes often require more frequent and more specialized healthcare than most children. Although these children can receive their medical care at a non-foster care center of excellence there are benefits to children when they receive their healthcare from a clinic with specialized experience, expertise, and a passion for providing holistic, compassionate care to this patient population.

As part of UT Health San Antonio, we have many resources and well-developed community partnerships that have allowed us to build a best practice model to care for children in foster and kinship care in San Antonio, Bexar County, and the surrounding rural communities.

Learn more about our HRSA grant >>

Current Services

• One-stop shop for DFPS-mandated screenings (“3 in 30” including CANS assessment)
• Trauma-informed and culturally competent screening of abuse and neglect
• Behavioral health services including medication management and individual therapy
• TB testing, vaccinations, dental varnishing, required lab screenings, and as-needed contraception
• Routine updating of Superior Health Passport, e-CANS, and ImmTrac2
• Same-day scheduling of sick children, after-hours visits, and telehealth and mobile van visits to under-resourced communities
• We accommodate large sibling sets