Services for Families

Adoption Services
For more than 110 years, CHS has been recruiting and preparing individuals and families who are willing to open their hearts and homes to adopt children in need. Utilizing innovative strategies, CHS focuses on placing older children, sibling groups, and children with a wide variety of special needs in permanent, loving families where they can thrive.

Our adoption programs involve family recruitment, parenting preparation, home study services, counseling for families and children, post-placement support, and a variety of services for the entire family. Through counseling with experienced staff and valuable training classes, CHS prepares parents for the unique challenges of adopting a child. Because an adoption is a new beginning for families, CHS provides lifelong support and assistance to adoptive families with special support services.

Foster Care Services
CHS works diligently to provide safe homes for every child in need of a temporary safe haven. We recruit, train, license, and support foster families so they can provide the best possible care for children in need.

CHS is dedicated to helping both children and families with extensive support and services until a permanent plan for the child in determined. Foster families receive a stipend determined by the state each month of non-taxable funds to assist with the cost of food and housing for the child. Foster families may also receive assistance with medical care, clothing, and special enrichment experiences for children in their care. All foster families are required to complete annual training to maintain their foster care license.

Birth Parent Services
CHS has highly experienced, caring social workers who work closely with birth parents considering adoption. These services are designed to help birth parents make decisions with confidence in a non-judgmental, supportive environment. Click here for more information on birth parent services.

Therapeutic & Post Adoption Services
Our therapeutic and post adoption services provide on-going assistance to children and families - both during and after an adoptive placement.  This support may include answering questions about raising an adopted child, hosting support groups, providing counseling, updating records, reconnecting adult adoptees with their birth family, addressing adjustment issues in new families, or simply offering a listening ear.  CHS also offers a lending library with materials related to adoption and foster care.  Click here for more information on therapeutic and post adoption services.

In-Home Services
Intensive family preservation and reunification services are designed to keep families together whenever possible by strengthening families rather than removing the child from the home permanently. This is done through strength-based, family centered services that empower, prepare, and equip families to safely care, protect, and provide for their children. Our services focus on the family’s specific needs, the safety of the child, and special skills development.

Services are delivered to families in their own homes and communities, at times that are most convinent for them. These in-home services take our social workers into the homes of families and build connections and support systems that enable the family and the child to thrive. These services are designed to be provided on a short-term basis for a period of 4-8 weeks, based on the specific needs of the family.

Family Support & Self-Sufficiency    View Video
In 2010, in an effort to revitalize the West Corridor of Charlotte and bring about a better quality of life to public housing residents, the Charlotte Housing Authority received federal funding and partnered with CHS to assist families in moving from system dependence to self-sufficiency.

The CHS Family Support and Self Sufficiency program provides family-strengthening case management to the families in the Boulevard Homes community. The program employs an integrated and innovative approach that is community based and takes place in the privacy of the family’s home or community, not in an administrative office.

When the revitalized community is complete it will include multi-family homes, independent senior living apartments, a childcare center, a signature K-8 public school, and an array of family services designed to provide families with the skills and support they critically need.

Family Chronicles
Families can utilize CHS’s Adoption Chronicles production services to createvideo interviews featuring details about the family’s life, home, and personalities. These Family Chronicles can be used by social work teams to find matches for waiting children and birth mothers. These videos can also be used to share information about a foster family with a child entering a new placement to alleviate transition issues. Click here for more information on Family Chronicles.

Click here to refer a family.

For more information, please call 1-800-632-1400 or contact us.