Burke Center for Youth is a nonprofit organization formed in 1973 to care for Texas children who are removed from their home environments due to abuse, neglect, or problems with the law. We are providing help and hope to children in crisis through our services. These are the children that belong to no one, and yet, they belong to us all. Help us to help these children in order that they may eventually belong in a family.

OUR MISSION with these children is to turn back the hands of time, and help them build self respect, self reliance, and self esteem.

OUR HOPE is to help them to unlock and melt away the pain and help them see that they are indeed loveable.

OUR GOAL is that they depart from here as productive, responsible citizens.

OUR WORK is to break the cycle of abuse and neglect..

We invite you to learn more about us and the youth we serve.

Our foster care program
BURKE CENTER CHILD PLACING AGENCY

Children in crisis who are removed from their families due to abuse and/or neglect are placed in basic or therapeutic foster homes (according to level of care needed) throughout the state of Texas. Foster parents are specially trained to care for these children’s special behavioral and therapeutic needs. The children live in the foster home as a member of the family, attend public school, usually in their familiar district, attend and participate in community events, after school activities and sports, while learning independent living skills and improving their social skills.

Therapeutic services, foster parent training curriculum, and oversight of the Burke Child Placement Management staff is provided by the Treatment Director (M.Ed, LMSW) who has many years of experience working with at-risk youth. Each child is provided with a plan of service which details how services will be delivered to each child. Oversight of the plan of service is done by a team of professionals including: Treatment Director, Therapist, Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Child Placement Management staff, Administrators, and Foster Parents who are trained and dedicated to serving youth. Each child and foster family is assigned a Child Placement staff member to be an advocate, resource, and problem solver. Our agency Child Placement staff see the child at least twice a month for a meaningful amount of time to see how things are going. They are on-call 24 hours a day should an emergency arise for the child or the foster parents. They must also be available 24 hours a day in order to respond to emergency calls from the state workers when yet another child is picked up for abuse or neglect and needs a home in the middle of the night.

Many of our foster parents have been parents for many years, have fostered multiple children, and quite a few have provided a permanent home or have adopted their foster child. Some of our foster homes specialize in helping the boys who graduate from the Pathfinders program. Many boys have worked hard to achieve independent living with the help of these special foster parents.

Burke Center Child Placing Agency manages foster care placement from five offices: Brownsville, Brownwood, Laredo, Corpus Christi, and at its headquarters office in Driftwood (Austin). More than 150 children are under our supervision at any one time. If you are interested in becoming a foster parent, please contact the office closest to you.

Personas en cada oficina tienen la capacidad de hacer entrevistas y el curso de entrenemiento para familias nuevas en las lenguajes hispanicas.