Foster care in San Antonio runs through a local model the state calls Community-Based Care. Since September 1, 2025, a single contractor has been responsible for finding foster homes and arranging services for children removed in Bexar County, and licensed child-placing agencies such as Angelheart verify and support the families those children live with. If you live in San Antonio and are thinking about fostering, this post explains how the system is organised here, how many children it serves, what Texas requires of a foster family, and where our San Antonio office fits.
The short version: you do not apply to the county or to a courthouse. You work with a licensed agency, the agency verifies your home, and the local contractor places children with verified homes as close to their own school and family as it can.
How is foster care organised in Bexar County?
Bexar County is its own Community-Based Care area, which DFPS still labels Region 8a, and it is made up of one county. DFPS states that the Single Source Continuum Contractor for the area is SJRC Texas Inc. and its division, Belong, with Stage I going live on September 1, 2025 and Stage II on March 1, 2026. The 27 counties around San Antonio, excluding Bexar, form a separate area, Region 8b, where the same contractor reached Stage II on October 1, 2022.
What that contractor does is spelled out on the DFPS Community-Based Care page: it is responsible for finding foster homes or other living arrangements for children in state care and for providing a full range of services, including case management. DFPS describes the goal as keeping children closer to home and connected to their schools, friends and families as much as possible. In Stage II the contractor also provides kinship and reunification services, which matters because reunification with parents is the first goal in every Texas case.
How many children in San Antonio are in foster care?
More than most people expect. DFPS data on the Texas Open Data Portal records 3,148 Bexar County children in DFPS legal responsibility at some point during fiscal year 2025. Of those, 1,432 were age five or younger and 748 were age 13 or older. Across the whole of DFPS Region 8, which is San Antonio and the surrounding counties, 2,850 children were in state care on August 31, 2025, out of 17,623 statewide.
Where those children live is the part that explains why agencies recruit families. On August 31, 2025, DFPS counted 2,011 Bexar County children in substitute care. The largest group, 844, were in kinship care with relatives. Another 537 were in non-relative foster homes verified by child-placing agencies and 90 were in agency-verified relative foster homes, against a single child in a DFPS-run foster home. The rest were in facilities rather than homes: 141 in residential treatment centers, 93 in emergency shelters and 120 in basic child care.
What happens to children who enter care here?
Most go home or to family. The DFPS exit data for fiscal year 2025 shows 1,065 Bexar County children leaving state custody that year. The largest single group, 357, were reunified with their families. Another 214 went to the custody of relatives, 190 were adopted by relatives and 178 were adopted by non-relatives. A further 118 aged out through youth emancipation, which is the outcome a foster family for a teenager is there to prevent.
Those numbers are worth holding in mind before the first placement call. On DFPS's own record, a foster family in San Antonio is more likely to help a child return to a parent or a relative than to adopt that child, and Texas law and DFPS policy are built around that order of priority.
What does Texas require of a foster parent?
The DFPS requirements are the same in San Antonio as anywhere else in the state. Prospective foster and adoptive parents must be at least 21, financially stable and responsible mature adults; they may be single or married. They complete an application, provide relative and non-relative references, agree to a home study that includes visits with every household member, and allow criminal history and abuse or neglect checks on all adults in the home. Foster parents also agree to a nonphysical discipline policy, obtain CPR and first aid certification, complete TB testing and keep no more than six children in the home, counting their own.
The steps DFPS lists are an information meeting, a preparation and selection conversation, training and a family home study. The pre-service course, Texas NTDC, is described by DFPS as a 19-hour training program that gives prospective foster families base knowledge. The home study is a caseworker visiting your home to talk through your personal history, your family's interests and lifestyle, your childcare experience, the kinds of children who would fit best in your home, and your strengths in meeting their needs.
How do you check that an agency is in good standing?
Every child-placing agency in Texas is licensed and inspected by HHSC Child Care Regulation, which conducts routine inspections at licensed operations at least annually. HHSC publishes the minimum standard requirements and the deficiencies cited for each operation on its Search Texas Child Care site, and it defines a deficiency as any failure to comply with a statute, rule or minimum standard. Before you sign with any agency, ours included, that record is public and worth reading.
Where Angelheart fits in
Angelheart is a licensed child-placing agency contracted with DFPS, with three programs: foster care, kinship care and adoption. Our San Antonio office is at 5368 Fredericksburg Road, Suite 100, Building C, San Antonio, TX 78229, and Program Director Ruby Palacios and the San Antonio team guide local families through becoming foster, kinship and adoptive homes, with case management, training and 24-hour on-call support. The office serves families throughout the Alamo City and the surrounding Bexar County communities.
Our own foster parent requirements sit on top of the state's: applicants are 25 or older, Texas residents, with an available bedroom of at least 80 square feet for the foster child, a home that passes a health and fire inspection, the required hours of foster parent training, and agreement to the no physical discipline policy. Those are steps, not a promise about when or whether a child will be placed. If you are in San Antonio and want to talk it through with someone who does this locally every day, call the San Antonio office at (210) 405-0014 or start an inquiry and we will reach out to you.