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Do not use this site to make decisions about employment, tenant screening, or any purpose covered by the FCRA. Once you’ve spoken with our Foster Parent Recruiter and you feel ready to take the next step, we will schedule an official interview with our Nevada Director/Clinical Director, Sandy Arguello. All adults in your home must be fingerprinted and obtain a criminal record clearance and a child abuse index clearance.
Koinonia Foster Homes was founded in California in 1982, and expanded to Nevada in 1994. With over 40 years serving children and families and 28 years of service in Nevada, Koinonia has proven time and again we are committed to being an important and integral part of our local Northern Nevada community. Koinonia provides Specialized Foster Care, provided by specialized foster parents, who are personally trained and supported by Koinonia Nevada.
Koinonia’s Day Treatment History
If I forget something that I’ve made an agreement on, Angela can say to me, “this was the agreement,” oh, that was my agreement, okay, that’s exactly what we’re going to do. And that’s exactly what we do with foster parents, that’s what we do with staff, that’s what we do with the children we serve. Koinonia’s Preadolescent Day Treatment serves children ages 6 to 13 who have experienced chronic interpersonal trauma, especially sexual and/or physical abuse.
We work hard to be the best support we can be so foster families can make their best difference in the lives of these most vulnerable children. Our service portfolio includes 20 licensed group homes, over 50 supported living arrangements, transportation services, and shared living options, all provided in safe and healthy settings. We offer 24/7 care and drop-in residential options, as well as assistance to adults and youth transitioning from school to the working world. The goal of Day Treatment is to address emotional, cognitive, and behavioral issues in a milieu setting. The children receive services in the milieu in addition to individual and group therapy. The children’s caregivers are also involved in the program and are kept well-informed of the therapeutic topics addressed so they can play an active role in the children’s progress.
How does the foster system work? What levels of foster care are there?
There are a lot of factors because ultimately, you’re not only looking for a safe placement, you’re looking for a great placement. The Preadolescent Day Treatment operates on a point and level system, which gives the children a clear definition of desired and undesired behaviors. Part of what makes the Preadolescent Day Treatment successful is the caregivers’ participation in the child’s progress. Not only do the children receive feedback while in the program, they also receive feedback at home, which provides consistency and reinforcement for their behaviors. Koinonia’s respite care services offer provisional assistance for families and unpaid providers in need of planned respite and emergency placements for their loved ones.
This place has delicious food, but it also has a unique treat--a webcam on a stork's nest. All spring and summer you can watch the storks prepare the nest, lay their eggs, and then raise the babies. I love this place, it's very cosy with all the fireplaces and lovely decorated wooden furnitures. It's famous for "Wiener Schnitzel" and "Schäuffle" and I can recommend booking a table in advance as it's alway very busy. † Spokeo is not a consumer reporting agency as defined by the Fair Credit Reporting Act .
Q : Where is Koinonia Homes located?
The children in our care require extra attention and services in order to reach their highest potential. We support our foster parents with emotional and mental support, both in their homes and in the community. Koinonia is committed to providing top notch treatment level services to our families and children, and above all else, excellence in all we do. The length of time children live in a foster home can vary from short-term, up to six months, to long-term, up to several years. Sometimes our foster parents even end up adopting the foster children who have been living with them. Pre-service training is less if you go with the state or the county than if you go with a treatment-level agency, but not a lot less; it’s the difference between 27 hours and 40 hours.
In addition to therapeutic services, behavioral training and reinforcement, clients are also taught life skills such as age-appropriate grooming, self-responsibility, job skills, and educational skills. Clients are also provided recreational therapy opportunities which enhance perseverance, cooperation, team work, and resilience. All of these things combine to create a therapeutic environment which allows the youth to grow into thriving young adults. Koinonia in Northern Nevada offers a Day Treatment Program serving both preadolescent and adolescent youth.Preadolescent Day Treatment, established in 2001, serves younger children, ages 6 to 13.
The Koinonia Connection
Ultimately you are supposed to have an income coming into your home that’s not just the foster income, and again, that’s a conversation with people. Not everyone works out of the home, and in fact a lot of our parents don’t work, but there might be a second partner in the home. We proudly offer safe and reliable non-medical transportation for people who have developmental disabilities and other complex medical conditions. We follow COVID-19 guidelines to ensure the health and safety of all passengers, including cleaning and disinfecting between each route and at the end of each day. At Koinonia Enterprises, we offer facility-based programs such as adult day services, vocational habilitation services, community programming, in-home programming, and virtual programming.
The reason we don’t do it quickly is because we want the information to ingest. More than the information being ingested, it’s the relationship we’re building. A lot of it happens after the placement of your first child and then we go back and say, “Do you remember when we talked about this? Even staff will tell us, about two weeks after they’re hired, they say, “I’ve never worked in a place like this. It’s just a different environment, where we take the relationships very seriously, and we take the family relationship, the idea of being a family, that we’re here together; one thing we say to each other on a regular basis is “what was our agreement?
Shared living enables individuals to receive continuous care while living with a nurturing family. Cared for by thoroughly trained providers, the individuals get to be a part of a community that is flexible and personalized to their needs. To partner with people who have developmental disabilities and other complex conditions, resulting in the highest possible quality of life through integrated, whole-person care.
Our compassionate staff provide 24/7 supervision in an accessible and comfortable environment. At Koinonia, we have brought together our decades of experience serving and advocating for people with IDD with the mission of helping people to live the life they choose and achieve their personal goals. Koinonia’s vision ensures that we address the whole person, integrating care and services in ways that support the unique needs and preferences of each person. Although we generally serve foster and other at-risk youth, our highly trained and skilled therapists are sometimes able to accommodate other members of the community seeking therapy as well. The Adolescent Day Treatment operates on a point and level system, which gives the youth a clear definition of desired and undesired behaviors. You can partner with us by becoming a foster parent, making a donation, fund raising, or seeking employment.
Usually we like to see new families with one or two children in the home, but I have families who have way more than that in their homes. They have experience, they might have a sibling group, and again, that’s an individual conversation with every family. The number of children is based on the configuration of their family, the children they might already have in the home, and their bed space as far as bedrooms and square footage in the home.
In addition to therapeutic services, behavioral training and reinforcement, children are taught life skills such as age-appropriate grooming, self-responsibility, job skills, and educational skills. They are also provided recreational therapy opportunities which enhance perseverance, cooperation, team work, and resilience. All of these things combine to create a therapeutic environment which allows the children to grow into thriving young adults. Since then Koinonia has served the Nevada community helping over 1000 specialized foster children. In 2006 Koinonia Foster Homes changed our company name to Koinonia Family Services, to better represent the other services our agency provides. In Nevada, you may run into both names…”Koinonia Foster Homes” and “Koinonia Family Services,” as we want to be sure we keep the great need for foster homes in front of the public eye.
What is Sandy’s and Angela’s History with Koinonia Foster Homes?
The children receive therapeutic services and feedback throughout their day. The purpose of the program is to nurture children who suffer from PTSD and other mental health diagnoses back to a healthy mental state. In 2001, the State of Nevada asked Koinonia to start a Day Treatment program. Day Treatment’s goal was, and continues to be, to create a strong therapeutic environment to facilitate each child’s mental health healing in a daily structured setting. Our Day Treatment program has been recognized for its excellence and is highly regarded in our community for the outstanding services we are able to provide to significantly vulnerable youth and children.
Individuals choose where to live and assert responsibility by paying their living expenses. When becoming a Specialized Foster Parent with Koinonia, you are required to meet all the requirements as well as 40 hours of in-house training with our highly trained staff. Water Safety Training is necessary if there is a body of water such as a pool, spa or pond on the property, or if the children swim in an area where there is no lifeguard on duty.
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