The Community Preventive Services Task Force recommends therapeutic foster care for adolescents ages 12–18 with a history of chronic delinquency to prevent violence among this population. Therapeutic foster care is used to describe 2 distinct forms of treatment: program-intensive therapeutic foster care is an alternative to incarceration, hospitalization, or other forms of group and residential treatment for adolescents with a history of chronic antisocial behavior, or delinquency; and cluster therapeutic foster care is provided to children with severe emotional disturbance, most often by “clusters” of foster families that cooperatively care for a group of children.

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Reduce Injury, Reduce Morbidity, Public Health, Community- & Faith-Based Organizations, Law Enforcement, Behavioral & Social, Primary Prevention, Families & Households, Patients