Our mission:

To provide effective and innovative community-based mental health and educational services to children with severe emotional and behavioral impairments and their families, in a variety of family and residential placement settings.

Our vision:

Our efforts will be focused on securing meaningful and lasting solutions. We will accomplish this goal by enhancing our client's ability to function in a manner which is respectful of their individuality and satisfying to them.

Our values:

We believe that professionalism, integrity, commitment and responsibility are integral qualities in all members of our organization. Humor, understanding and optimism are also essential in the achievement of our mission.

Alternate Family Care (AFC) was established in 1985 in response to a request from the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services (HRS), presently known as the Department of Children and Families. HRS wanted AFC to develop regional model community-based residential treatment programs to de-institutionalize special needs children who were severely emotionally disturbed and primarily served in the State Hospital System.

In August of 1985, Dr. Ronald Simon, Founder and Dr. David Ferguson, President of Alternate Family Care opened our community-based residential treatment center for severely emotionally disturbed children in Hollywood, Florida and a specialized therapeutic foster care (STFC) program in Jupiter, Florida.

The Hollywood Residential Facility presently has a capacity for 17 children and remains a secure setting with 24 hour staff, and intensive therapeutic and psychiatric services. The children, who range from ages 5 to 14, attend school on site under contract with the Broward County School Board.

Since 1985, our President of Alternate Family Care has sought to uphold our mission to provide services for severely emotionally disturbed children in community-based settings. Besides our original sites in Hollywood and Jupiter, we now have an additional 3 programs located in Melbourne, Ft. Pierce, Sunrise, and Miami.

These additional sites were modeled after the Jupiter STFC program which is structured differently from the Hollywood Residential Program. This model of care utilizes specially trained treatment foster parents or staff to provide a therapeutic environment in their own home, or in a corporately operated group home. Psychiatric and therapeutic services are provided along with 24 hour on call support staff.   More detail...