The Martin Pollak Project’s Foster Parent Services Department functions as the agency’s gateway to developing out-of-home placement resources for children placed in its Specialized/Treatment Foster Care Programs, located in Washington, DC and Baltimore, Maryland respectfully. The department is responsible for recruiting foster parents through the employment of an array of innovative techniques, guiding the prospective foster parents through a structured orientation, designing/conducting intensive, therapeutic pre and in-service trainings, as well as certifying the foster parents in accordance with the appropriate regulatory and licensing authorities.

As a vibrant, community-based child placement agency in both the District of Columbia and Maryland, the Foster Parent Services Department monitors to ensure compliance, while maintaining a cadre of qualified, nurturing caregivers. To be sure, the sustainability of the agency is dependent upon it being able to develop and retain an out-of-home placement resource pool of foster parents who thoroughly acknowledge their pivotal role as members of a therapeutic team, as well as functioning as the therapeutic “agent of change”.