Kaleidoscope’s programs are designed to create services that better match available resources with the needs of each child. Kaleidoscope teams are further tailored to provide individualized plans of care that are culturally sensitive and build on the child’s strengths. 

Located in Blue Island, Kaleidoscope’s foster care programs provide family living and specialized services to over 60 children and youth each year. Many of these youth have experienced numerous previous placements, have been institutionalized, have severe mental health needs or multiple disabilities, are young parents and/or display extreme misbehaviors. These children are placed in foster homes where the parent is extensively trained on how to help this unique population. Therapeutic services ensure that children and youth will not be denied the experience of a family and community life.

The programs also assist children with complex medical conditions. Kaleidoscope started one of the first pediatric AIDS programs in the country and the first of its kind in Illinois. At any one time, Kaleidoscope serves around 25 children with complex medical cases.

Kaleidoscope offers adolescent parents who are wards of the state the opportunity to learn effective parenting skills and accept responsibility for themselves and their children while they are in foster care. Foster parents are specially trained to care for both the adolescent parent and baby, and to serve as a role model for the teenager so she can better parent her own child.

Through transitional programs, Kaleidoscope teaches youth, 18-21 years of age, independent living skills and affords the vocational and educational assistance needed to succeed at becoming self-sufficient young adults. Because of Kaleidoscope’s philosophy of unconditional care, youth are not removed from the program for punitive reasons.

Kaleidoscope staff work in teams to assist the young people with any areas needing improvement and build upon their strengths. Teams initially concentrate on stabilizing behavior, later shifting to establishing educational or vocational goals and learning basic independent living skills, such as budgeting and maintaining the apartment in which they live.

Kaleidoscope’s Find Your Future internship program selects and matches college students with employers for paid, full-time, 10-week internships lasting from early June through mid-August. The program, begun in 2005 as a joint venture between Kaleidoscope and DCFS, is now run and sponsored by Kaleidoscope and is made possible by donations from foundations, individuals and participating employers.

To attain independence, youth require the advice and help they get from their support system, which typically includes family, community, friends, schools, and other civic or religious organizations. For teens lacking a support system, Kaleidoscope fills the gap through an array of services with a community focus.

Community Services houses Systems of Care, or SOC, one of the oldest and largest in-home, family-based programs. It has been nationally recognized as the model for working with families facing unique emotional and mental challenges with a community focus. Each year, state and other foster care agencies refer hundreds of children to Kaleidoscope for assessment and interventions intended to strengthen the foster family unit or reunite foster children with their birth families.

SOC remains flexible in order to build on the strengths of each child, family and community to develop an array of short-term, individualized services. Community resources are the first source of intervention accessed to address any behavioral, emotional and physical needs of the child. SOC teams include the family’s primary caseworker and other individuals that have a significant role in the lives of the child and his or her family.