Hamdard Center for Health & Human Services has been dealing with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) involving South Asian and Middle Eastern and Muslim children since 1994. The agency has the first hand knowledge and experience in dealing with the pains, horror, and the trauma of these families when their children are placed in the custody of the DCFS. The agency and its professionals have also witnessed the psychological damage, the aftermath, and negative outcome for the children, especially when they are placed in culturally and religiously incompatible homes.

Lack of licensed South Asian and Middle Eastern foster homes, however, severely limit the child welfare agency’s ability to find culturally compatible homes for these children. As a pro-active response to address these issues in 1998, Hamdard established a Child Welfare Agency, duly licensed by the Illinois Department of Children & Family Services.

Hamdard Child Welfare Agency offers a wide range of multi-cultural and multilingual programs and services for South Asian and the Middle Eastern children and families:

		24-hour Crisis line for crisis intervention and referral
		Recruit and train foster parents
		License South Asian and Middle Eastern foster parents
		Work with DCFS to facilitate compatible placement of children
		Monitor and provide ongoing support to licensed foster parents
		Provide assessment, therapy and counseling to children, their foster parents, and biological parents
		Provide parenting skills training to parents
		Offer non-violent conflict resolution and social skills training to children
		Collaborate with schools, courts, public guardian’s office, DCFS, and other social service agencies to promote children’s positive growth
		Facilitate reunification of foster children with their biological families or alternate permancy plans
		Provide supervised visitation of children with their biological parent