Starting an adult foster care community can be stressful. It’s not just about finding staff to hire, issues related to compliance, and covering overhead. It’s also about providing a high quality of care to meet the care needs of the residents.

AFC tips unpacked

In order to provide senior care or foster care for adults with disabilities, there are 10 steps to help make your AFC licensed home successful.

1. Determine your mission and the population you will serve in the Adult Foster Care Home.

2. Hire caregivers with a heart and passion to provide senior care, foster care with adults with disabilities or mental illness.

3. Use systems to onboard AFC staff easily and create a strong staff training, mentoring, and retention program.

4. Calculate the minimum to charge to cover the overhead of the facility as well as profit to stay open long term and provide a living for the staff and owner. 

5. Know how to assess the Adult Foster Care resident’s care needs and how to present them for proper funding.

6. Have systems in place to complete Licensing required checks on a weekly and monthly time frame for successful and less stressful audits.

7. Screen residents carefully to ensure they meet the AFC admission policy, meet the skill set of the staff and their funding matches their care needs.

8. Create binders for each resident and staff with required AFC licensing documents for easy access to mandatory information

9. Conduct monthly success checkups to check the resident quality of care and categories Licensing will audit and monitor.

10. Use programs to record medications, resident history, and contact information. For multiple facilities use programs to onboard staff easily, track trainings and process payroll.

How to get it done

Sometimes accomplishing the tips mentioned or finding the time to create them seems difficult. If these tips seem overwhelming, consider hiring an adult foster care system specialist to partner with you to help you succeed. Care Provider Solutions can offer the assistance you need to operate your home community based setting AFC Homes successfully.