1. (a)

   1. (1) Services to preserve families and protect children encompass a comprehensive continuum of services designed to address the life needs of the child and the family.
   2. (2) These services include concrete services such as housing, transportation, cash assistance, rental deposit, food, and direct therapeutic intervention both for the family, as a whole, and for individual family members.
   3. (3) The array of services to preserve families and protect children is either direct or purchased services.

2. (b)

   1. (1) Services available to children and families are provided through Title IV-B, subpart II funding under the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Programs.
   2. (2) The child’s health and safety will be a priority in the provision of services.

   3. (3) The four (4) categories of services under the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program are:

      1. (A) Family preservation services;
      2. (B) Family support services;
      3. (C) Time-limited family reunification services; and
      4. (D) Adoption promotion and support services.
   4. (4) Family preservation services means services to children and families designed to help families, including adoptive and extended families, at risk or in crisis.

3. (c) Family preservation services include:

   1. (1) Service programs designed to help children, where appropriate, return to families from which they have been removed, be placed for adoption, be placed with a legal guardian, and if adoption or legal guardianship is determined not to be safe and appropriate for a child, in some other planned, permanent living arrangement;
   2. (2) Preplacement preventive services programs, such as intensive family preservation programs, designed to help children at risk of foster care placement remain safely with their families;
   3. (3) Service programs designed to provide follow-up care to families to whom a child has been returned after a foster care placement;
   4. (4) Respite care of children to provide temporary relief for parents and other caregivers, including foster parents; and
   5. (5) Services designed to improve parenting skills by reinforcing parents’ confidence in their strengths, and helping them to identify where improvement is needed and to obtain assistance in improving those skills with respect to matters such as child development, family budgeting, coping with stress and health and nutrition.

4. (d) Family support services are community-based services that promote the well-being of children and families and are designed to:

   1. (1) Increase the strength and stability of families (including adoptive, foster, and extended families);
   2. (2) Increase parents’ confidence and competence in their parenting abilities; and
   3. (3) Afford children a stable and supportive family environment, and otherwise to enhance child development.

5. (e) Services include:

   1. (1) Respite care;
   2. (2) Early developmental screening of children;
   3. (3) Mentoring;
   4. (4) Tutoring;
   5. (5) Health education for youth;
   6. (6) Parenting skills;
   7. (7) Counseling;
   8. (8) Home visiting activities; and
   9. (9) A range of center-based activities.

6. (f)

   1. (1) Time-limited reunification are services and activities that are provided to a child that is removed from the child’s home and placed in a foster family home or a childcare institution, and to the parents or primary caregiver of such a child, in order to facilitate the reunification of the child safely and appropriately within a timely fashion, but only during the fifteen-month period that begins on the date the child enters foster care.

   2. (2) Services include:

      1. (A) Counseling;
      2. (B) Substance abuse treatment services;
      3. (C) Mental health services;
      4. (D) Assistance to address domestic abuse;
      5. (E) Temporary child care; and
      6. (F) Transportation to services/activities.
7. (g) Adoption promotion and support services are services and activities designed to encourage more adoptions out of the foster care system, when adoptions promote the best interest of children, including such activities as preadoptive and postadoptive services and activities designed to expedite the adoption process and support adoptive families.

Codification Notes: This section as promulgated prior to codification into the Code of Arkansas Rules provided as follows: "01/2005"