The staff at the Rees-Jones Center for Foster Care Excellence works with social workers, psychiatrists, and early childhood development and behavioral health specialists.[/caption]Children’s Medical Center Plano is home to the newly opened Rees-Jones Center for Foster Care Excellence, a specialized primary care facility for children currently in the Texas foster care system.
The Rees-Jones Center opened May 4 and provides foster children rehabilitation for physical and mental well-being.
“This is the first of its kind—where we have fully integrated care in one spot,” said Jeff Bromfield, practice administrator for the Rees-Jones Center. “Many [primary care physicians] don’t work with the foster care population.”
The center is a partnership between Children’s Health and UT Southwestern Medical Center. An $18.9 million grant from the Rees-Jones Foundation enabled the Rees-Jones Center to convert from a foster care medical home program into a long-term, recovery-focused clinic, said Loring Knott, media relations specialist for Children’s Health.
“The Rees-Jones Center will function ... just as any pediatrician’s office,” she said. “We do recognize that foster children have different needs and we plan to provide integrated care, which means we work directly with a behavioral health care provider; physical, mental and behavioral needs will be met at the same time.”
The clinic is equipped with five examination rooms, an on-site Child Protective Services liaison and multiple therapy rooms. The center is staffed by 15 UT Southwestern members specializing in pediatrics, psychiatry, early childhood development and behavioral health.
Children’s Health will open another facility in Dallas in the fall in conjunction with UT Southwestern.
“The current health care system is reactionary, but at the Rees-Jones Center, we try to prevent problems,” said Jaclyn Albin, a doctor at the Rees-Jones Center. “We want to teach parents who are doing this ... to do it better,” she said. “These children come from traumatic backgrounds so the priority for this center is to ensure that children in foster care get the highest level of care.”
