Program areas at Hands Across the Water
Statewide foster care contracted through the Michigan department of health and human services: foster care programs assist families and children with a goal of ensuring that children are safe, healthy, and cared for in their family of origin whenever possible. In 2024, 172 youth were served in the foster care program. 24 youth were reunified with their families. Hatw assessed and maintained 34 licensed foster homes and 34 unlicensed relative/kinship placements.
Behavioral health: hatw provides counseling services to children and families with special focus on trauma, grief and loss, foster care and adoption issues, and marital, parenting, and adjustment issues. Numerous insurance plans are accepted including several medicaid, hmos, as well as private pay clients. In 2024, 52 children and adults benefitted from behavioral health services at hatw.
Adoption services, including state ward adoption, international adoption, and infant adoption services: state ward adoption matches children in foster care who are unable to return home with adoptive families including relatives of the child, non-relative foster parents, or a recruited adoptive family. International adoption primarily assists us citizen families seeking to adoption family members or unrelated children from program countries including mexico, dominican republic, bangladesh, bulgaria and azerbaijan. In 2024, hatw completed a total of 39 adoptions among three programs.
New in 2024, hatw expanded into kinship services providing information, referrals, and support to kinship caregivers to improve outcomes for their families. In 2024, hatw served 53 kinship families.