To start fostering a child in Temple, Texas, you attend a free information meeting, choose a licensed agency, complete the state's pre-service training and a home study, and have your home verified. The person who walks you through it is a caseworker at that agency, who stays with your family after a child is placed. This post sets out those steps in the order DFPS lists them, explains how foster care is organised in Bell County and how many children it serves, and says where our Temple office fits.
One thing to know before the first step: reunification with a child's own family is the state's first goal in every case. Fostering is how a child is kept safe while that goal is pursued, and a family that starts out fostering should not expect adoption to be the outcome.
How is foster care organised in Bell County?
Bell County is in DFPS Region 7, Austin, the same region as Williamson and Travis counties, according to the DFPS data on the Texas Open Data Portal. It is not part of Region 8b, the 27 counties around San Antonio, although search results sometimes mix the two. Region 7 is also not on the DFPS list of active Community-Based Care areas, so in Temple the children in care remain the responsibility of DFPS caseworkers, and licensed child-placing agencies verify and support the foster homes those children live in.
How many children in Bell County are in foster care?
Hundreds each year. DFPS data records 790 Bell County children in DFPS legal responsibility at some point during fiscal year 2025. Of those, 403 were age five or younger and 149 were age 13 or older.
On August 31, 2025, DFPS counted 383 Bell County children in substitute care. The largest group, 173, were in kinship care with relatives. Another 107 were in non-relative foster homes verified by child-placing agencies and 19 in agency-verified relative foster homes, against 4 children in foster homes run by DFPS itself. Thirty-five were in residential treatment centers.
What happens to children who enter care in Bell County?
Most go home or to relatives. In fiscal year 2025, DFPS exit records count 387 Bell County children leaving state custody. The largest group, 171, went to the custody of relatives, 153 of them without Permanency Care Assistance and 18 with it. Another 135 were reunified with their families. Twenty were adopted by relatives and 44 by non-relatives, and 15 left care through youth emancipation.
How do you start fostering in Temple, step by step?
DFPS's own steps to become a foster or adoptive parent are the same in Temple as anywhere in Texas.
- Information meeting. A free meeting where you can discuss the scope and requirements of being a foster or adoptive parent. DFPS says you do not need an appointment. The statewide Foster Care and Adoption Inquiry Line, 1-800-233-3405, is open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and refers callers to the nearest DFPS office.
- Preparation and selection. A conversation about whether fostering is right for your family. DFPS lists three ways to begin, two with DFPS and a third with a private agency that contracts with DFPS.
- Training. DFPS describes Texas NTDC as a 19-hour training program on caring for children in the child welfare system. The state minimum standards add CPR and first aid certification, training on preventing and recognising sexual abuse of youth in foster care, and the AS+K? suicide prevention course.
- Home study. A caseworker visits your home to discuss your personal history, family interests and lifestyle, childcare experience, the types of children who would best fit your home, and your strengths in meeting their needs.
The requirements behind those steps are short. DFPS says foster and adoptive parents may be single or married and must be at least 21, financially stable and responsible mature adults, provide relative and non-relative references, agree to a home study that includes everyone in the household, and keep no more than six children in the home counting their own.
Who walks you through the process?
If you foster through an agency, the agency does. DFPS describes a child placing agency as a private foster and adoption agency that works in partnership with DFPS to train foster and adoptive parents and find homes for children. The agency's staff take your application, schedule your training, complete your home study and verify your home.
That relationship does not end at verification. Under 26 Texas Administrative Code section 749.663, the agency's child placement staff are responsible for maintaining direct contact with the child and the foster parents and for monitoring and providing support services to foster parents. In practice that is the caseworker you call when a placement call comes in, when a school meeting goes badly, or when you need a break. Our post on what support foster parents can expect from a Texas agency covers what the rules require an agency to put in writing.
Where Angelheart fits in
Our Temple office at 5252 South 31st Street serves families across Bell County and the surrounding region, including Temple, Belton, Killeen, Harker Heights and the Waco area, from military families near Fort Cavazos to lifelong locals. Program Director Tanna Kee and the Temple team walk local families through becoming foster, kinship and adoptive homes, with hands-on case management, training and 24-hour on-call support.
Our 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, and criminal history forms for every household member 14 or older. Those are steps, not a promise about when or whether a child will be placed. If you are in Temple and want to talk it through with someone local, call the Temple office at (254) 933-7155 or start an inquiry and our team will reach out.