Specialized Family Foster Care - Excess Maintenance Payments (EMP) 624-05-20-10

(Revised 2/10/07 ML #3053)

View Archives

 

 

This is 24-hour care and supervision of a foster child with special problems, the severity of which places undue demands on the foster parent's physical, emotional, and/or material resources beyond the demands expected in normal foster parenting.  Specialized care homes are foster homes in which excess maintenance payments (EMP) are made on an individual basis when the foster child requires special services or based on the child's difficulty of care level.

 

These special services would involve an unusual amount of one or more of such things as: time, physical work, skill, stress, or cost to the foster parent. In the area of time, an unusual amount could be required for feeding, dressing, and/or supervising. In regard to the physical work in special situations, there could be a need for an unusual amount of washing, cleaning, lifting, and/or transporting. In the area of skill, the foster parent would need ability in teaching, and in the handling of behavior and/or medical problems. In the area of stress, consideration would be given to the strain on the foster parents when the child's needs require performing distasteful tasks, constant supervision, the meeting of frequent acute situations, and/or the handling of abnormal behavior problems. In the area of costs, consideration would be given to the destruction of household equipment, the unusual wear and tear of walls and woodwork and respite from child care demands.

 

Approximately 25% of the children in family foster care in North Dakota fall within this category. Payments to foster parents providing this type of care include the age appropriate foster care maintenance, and irregular items as stated in North Dakota Department of Human Services Manual Chapter 623-05 and excess maintenance payments (EMP) subject to the requirements noted in this manual chapter. Also, refer to NDDHS 623-05, "Difficulty of Care/Excess Maintenance Payments (EMP), Category 60.”

 

Relief care: See 623-05

 

Only licensed or affidavit homes should be used for relief care.