Funded Projects

Planning vision care in foster care 

Project Year

2025

City & State

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Program Name

CATCH Planning

Topic

Vision Health

Program Description

Problem:  Vision is tied to multiple aspects of health including physical, emotional, social, and developmental. Children in foster care are at disproportionate risk for both unmet vision need and health issues that are compounded by uncorrected vision problems such as academic delays. Multiple key stakeholders including health care providers, foster parents, families of origin and community child welfare agencies must work together to meet the health care needs of youth in foster care. Therefore, meaningfully addressing this issue requires a community-based approach to planning interventions that will ensure children in foster care have access to the vision care they need to be well.    Primary setting:  Philadelphia County’s child welfare agency uses a community-based approach to foster care case management by contracting with Community Umbrella Agencies (CUA) across 10 regions in the county. The primary setting for our project is the neighborhood served by CUA 9, Southwest Philadelphia. Reasons that make this an ideal setting for the project include the needs of the community and the established partnership between the  Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Fostering Health Program and CUA 9. CUA 9's Director of Community and Prevention will serve as a project lead.   Project Goal:  The goal of the project is to ensure youth in foster care in Southwest Philadelphia have timely access to the vision care needed to be well. The specific objectives are to 1 - establish a community advisory board to ensure all important key stakeholder perspectives are considered in project planning; 2- explore the extent and determinants of unmet vision need in the community; 3- identify community optometry partners and an implementation plan to ensure youth in foster care in Southwest Philadelphia have access to the vision are they need.   Proposed intervention:  We will establish a community advisory board comprised of foster parents, individuals with lived experience in foster care, foster care agency professionals and health care providers. Regular community advisory board meetings will cover topics including determinants of unmet vision need, strategies to overcome barriers to vision care such as insurance issues, and optimal plan for vision screening at the time of foster care placement. In addition to input from community advisory board on determinants of unmet need, we will gain additional understanding of the problem by conduction vision screening in the community to quantify the frequency of unmet vision needs. We will also identify community optometry partners who could serve children with abnormal vision screens in the implementation phase of this project.   Anticipated outcomes:  The project will result in an implementation plan to ensure children in foster care have access to timely vision screening, necessary optometry referrals, and corrective lenses throughout their time in foster care. Employing a community advisory board to develop the plan will ensure that perspectives of individuals with lived experience, health care professionals and child welfare professionals will be incorporated into a plan that is acceptable and feasible for all key stakeholders. We will also develop key relationships with community optometrists. We will submit grant applications to fund the implementation phase of the project. We also anticipate that the plan developed to ensure access to vision care can be adapted to other vital health care needs of children in foster care in the community. Fostering Health Program and CUA 9 are connected to Philadelphia Department of Human Services (DHS) leadership. Our community connections will facilitate presentation of our project results to DHS leadership with the goal of facilitating spread and adaptation of findings to the needs of other Philadelphia neighborhoods.  

Project Goal

Ensure children in foster care in Southwest Philadelphia have access to the vision care they need to be well. 

Project Objective 1

Establish a community advisory board comprised of individuals served by Community Umbrella Agency 9, the foster care agency in Southwest Philadelphia, (foster parents, family of origin, and youth >18 years with current or prior lived experience in foster care) and agency professionals with different roles within the first 3 months of project funding. 

Project Objective 2

Use prospective quantitative data and input from the advisory board to determine the extent and determinants of unmet vision needs in the population including percentage of children in need of glasses among youth in foster care in Southwest Philadelphia within the first 7 months of project funding.  

Project Objective 3

By the end of the 12-month funding period, develop a plan informed by the community advisory board that identifies at least 2 community vision care collaborators and that will be implemented to ensure that 90% of children in foster care served by Community Umbrella Agency 9 have access to vision screens and identified vision care needs within 1 month of foster care placement. 

AAP District

District III

Institutional Name

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

Contact 1

Kristine Fortin, MD, MPH