The health care-child welfare partnership: transitioning medically complex children to the community.

There is a growing number of medically complex children residing in hospitals who could benefit from home care. This paper describes a unique federally funded grant project designed to develop alternative home resources for those medically complex children whose parents are unable to provide the requisite home care. Building on an innovative partnership between a pediatric hospital and a community child welfare agency, this project recruited, trained, and supported foster parents to care for those children. Problems, solutions, and strategies for developing alternative home care resources for this population are presented.