Making Therapy & Treatment Affordable

Accessing the right services for foster, adopted, or kinship kids with attachment and trauma challenges often comes with a steep price tag. For example, quality treatment for Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) can be expensive, and navigating funding options is often overwhelming for families already under stress. This guide brings together programs, grants, scholarships, and practical tips for covering treatment costs — including resources recommended by other families who’ve successfully found financial support.

• Adoption and Guardianship Assistance by State
  The official Child Information Welfare Gateway publication that lists what resources are available by state along with contact information.
• Best Choice Admissions
  A free to parents service that helps find the right therapeutic school for their child. Programs across the US cost $500 to $18,000 per month and are usually not covered by insurance.
• Adoption Subsidy and Assistance
  Resource list from Formed Families Forward
• Fund Treatment
  Find Child & Youth Residential Treatment’s website is a set of articles about how to fund private residential treatment programs. For most families there are no easy solutions, but these posts do a good job laying out the different options.
• Issues in Child Support Enforcement: When Adopted Children Return to the Foster Care System or Enter Residential Treatment  
  These are the Federal laws and policies about how treatment programs are to be funded and what happens with adoption subsidies when adopted children need to go into residential care.
• State Independent Living and Education and Training Voucher (ETV) Coordinators
  State-by-state information on this federally funded program which is designed to assist with the transition to independent living.
• Topic No. 607 Adoption Credit and Adoption Assistance Programs
  IRS guidance on the adoption credit and adoption subsidies. Also, if you adopted out of foster care, see this article about renegotiating your child’s adoption subsidy if their special needs (including RAD) were not identified at the time of the adoption.
• Tuition Waivers by State
  State-by-state information on college tuition waivers for young people who were ever in foster care (even if they were subsequently adopted).
• The American Public Human Services Association (APHSA)
  Contact AAICPC to find your state’s ICPC office and get guidance on out of state placements or moves. Their resources can help you resolve delays, confirm who pays, and lock down supervision and Medicaid.
• When Adopted Children Return to the Foster Care System or Enter Residential Treatment
  Information on what happens to adoption subsidies when adopted kids return to care.

Didn’t find what you are looking for? Check out: Books on RAD, Attachment & Adoption Trauma