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Lighthouse Foster Clinic launches to help kids, families in foster care system – Daily Montanan

['Darrell Ehrlick', 'More From Author', '- February']

Date: 2022-02-12 00:00:00

Even though children in the foster care system may being experiencing transitions or changing home life, a new enterprise run through the Billings Clinic aims to stabilize medical care for the families in the system.

Lighthouse Foster Clinic, run through the Pediatrics department, has been designed to prioritize kids and families in the foster care system using trauma-informed treatment as it works to give support to struggling children and those who care for them.

The concept is straightforward: Oftentimes foster kids see a rotating number of different people in the system, from case workers to medical professionals. As they transition from one to another, often important medical and psychological information gets dropped. Lighthouse Foster Clinic aims to keep care consistent and work as a communication conduit for the children, ensuring that they get care tailored to their needs.

“A foster child visit is not like a well-child visit,” said pediatrician Dr. Matthew McDonald. “Fundamentally, we know that they are not well.”

McDonald, who did part of his residency in a foster care clinic in Oklahoma, said that children in the foster care system have almost always had several different traumatic experiences in their lives, which can include neglect, abandonment, exposure to drug and alcohol abuse, physical, verbal or sexual abuse. In the medical world, the acronym is “ACES” – or adverse childhood events.

Even removing the child from the family for their safety can be necessary but traumatic, McDonald explained. Because of those factors, children in the foster care program often have different needs and are more complex.

McDonald is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Foster Care, Adoption and Kinship Care.

So McDonald has established the first clinic that specifically addresses foster children and their families. In what he hopes will expand, the program has already accepted its first 50 patients since opening in September. A half day a week is spent seeing foster kids in clinic. Those visits are typically twice or three times as long as an average well-child visit, so that doctors and nurses can explore deeply into the child’s past, attending to emotional, psychological and other medical issues. McDonald explained that often children in foster care have emotional or developmental problems unlike those in different family settings. At other times, untreated or even undiagnosed medical problems can take time.

“The research shows that over the long term, the effects of the adverse childhood events can lead to serious health complications later in life,” McDonald said.

Also, the clinic aims at treating the family. So if a family has multiple foster children or kids, the entire group is seen individually to reduce the number of times a parent or guardian has to make trips to the doctor’s office.

For example, McDonald said often in a foster care clinic, one of the frequently missed conditions is asthma. Some kids, especially if they were exposed to cigarette smoke in the home, develop asthma, but it’s undiagnosed. Parents report a persistent cough. But today, with concern about COVID-19, the child may be repeatedly sent home with a cough, fearing that it’s COVID.

“For a foster family, that can be a placement breaker because the parent has to keep getting called out of work and adding to the stress level,” McDonald said. “But often, it’s a problem that can be treated easily.”

However, that problem isn’t always obvious unless a provider can spend more time and dig a little deeper into the child’s medical history.

The longer patient times also help keep kids in stable foster care families.

“Sometimes they can’t wait three months to see their pediatricians because oftentimes, the medical problems can go so long and get complicated that it can result in a change of placement,” McDonald said.

The goal is always to reunify the child with the family, but when that’s not possible, the next best thing is to keep the foster care consistent and medical treatment consistent, which leads to more stabilization and certainty for the child.

With dedicated nursing staff, foster parents also have a pipeline to the medical providers to address issues quickly.

“We want a place where they can begin to feel safe and find ways to talk about issues, including abuse,” McDonald said.

The program is still in its infancy. In fact, it’s collecting materials like coloring books and other activity kits to distribute in the clinic. And, the Billings Clinic hopes that fundraising can grow the program because of the demand.

“We would love to grow and find more partners in this,” said Josey Smiedala of the Billings Clinic.

Individuals interested in donating to the Lighthouse Foster Clinic can learn more and get connected by contacting the Billings Clinic Foundation by calling (406) 657-4670 or visiting www.billingsclinicfoundation.com. Learn more about the Lighthouse Foster Clinic at https://www.billingsclinic.com/services-specialties/pediatrics/lighthouse-foster-clinic.

Children in the clinic also see the same pediatrician, nurse and care coordinator – helping to stabilize and build confidence with the kids who may have previously been used to a revolving cast of medical providers, depending on where they live and who was taking care of them.

“This provides a medical home base of people who really know the child,” McDonald said. “That results in a continuity and the benefit of knowing their medical history and now, we can manage it.”

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