What Is Respite Care?

Respite provides a break for families dealing with issues surrounding the mental health needs of a child.  The designated child, in respite, stays with a particular foster family (called a respite resource home/family) for a set amount of time, usually a weekend.  This allows the child and his or her family to “recharge”.  The Maryland Respite Program is designed to help prevent children, who currently live with their parents or guardians, from going into an out of home placement by providing the child and his/her parents with the regularly scheduled, therapeutic break.

All respite parents complete specialized training to care for children with special needs.  The individuals served by Children’s Choice are from varied backgrounds and have a myriad of needs.  Young people with mental illness ages 3-17 are referred from parents, caregivers, educators, mental health care providers and all the County agencies.

What Does Respite Care Look Like?

Out-of-Home Respite is normally 12 nights every 3 months, split into 6 weekends.  Parents sometimes choose to do just one weekend a month or 3 nights at a time (Fri – Monday) and only do 4 weekends.  Children are reauthorized for another 12 nights after each 3 month period.  Typically respite starts on Friday Evening and goes to Sunday afternoon.

In-home Respite is 72 hours every 3 months.  The in home respite days can range from 15 minutes to 10 hours per day. In home is called in home because one of our resource parents can go into the home of one of our birth families to do respite there or they can take the child out into the community or back to their own home.  In home respite is when the child does not spend the night at the resource family’s home.