How to Open a Foster Home in Texas: Licensing, Costs, and Pay

To open a foster home in Texas, you must be at least 21, pass fingerprint-based background checks on every adult in your household, prepare your home to state safety standards, complete roughly 25 to 35 hours of pre-service training, and pass a home study conducted by a social worker. You can do this either directly through the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) or through a licensed child-placing agency (CPA). From first inquiry to license in hand, the process generally runs three to six months.

First Decision: DFPS or a Child-Placing Agency

Texas gives you two routes. You can work directly with DFPS, or you can go through a licensed child-placing agency — a private organization that contracts with the state to recruit, train, and support foster families.¹ Most Texas foster families go through a CPA. The agency handles your training, home study, and ongoing support in-house, and many offer extras like 24-hour on-call staff and clothing allowances. Either path leads to the same license, and the children placed with you come from the same DFPS conservatorship pool.

If you choose a CPA, compare a few before committing. Ask about their training schedule, average time to licensing, support services, and how they handle placement matching. Some agencies specialize in sibling groups, medically fragile children, or teens, and their training reflects that focus.

Who Qualifies

Every foster parent in Texas must be at least 21 years old.² You can be single or married, rent or own, and work full-time. There is no income floor in the regulations, but you have to show your household can pay its own bills without leaning on foster care reimbursements.

You and everyone in the household must be physically and mentally able to care for children, and all caregivers and household members have to complete a tuberculosis screening before any child in care has contact with them.³ A TB skin test runs roughly $40 to $75 out of pocket.

At least one foster parent must hold current pediatric CPR and pediatric first aid certification before a child is placed. A second foster parent has 90 days after placement to get certified.⁴ A combined CPR and first aid course costs roughly $70 to $150.

Background Checks

This is one of the most thorough parts of the process. Every person 14 or older living in your home must complete a fingerprint-based FBI criminal history check along with a check of child abuse and neglect registries.⁵ The same requirement reaches any volunteer with unsupervised access to a child in your home, babysitters including those 16 and 17, and frequent visitors who have lived outside Texas in the past five years.

The fingerprinting runs through both the Texas Department of Public Safety and the FBI. Foster and adoptive parent applicants, kinship caregivers, and household members pay a reduced rate of $37.75 per person.⁶ If anyone in your household has lived outside Texas within the past five years, an out-of-state abuse and neglect history check is also required.⁵

A fingerprint check you already completed for another job — teaching, nursing, law enforcement — does not carry over unless it was originally processed through DFPS and you have kept up with name-based background checks at least every 24 months since.⁵ Plan on getting fingerprinted again.

Preparing the Home

Your home does not have to be large or new, but it has to meet specific safety standards. Bedroom rules are precise: each child needs at least 40 square feet of bedroom space, single-occupant bedrooms must be at least 80 square feet, and no more than four children may share a bedroom regardless of its size.⁷ Closets and alcoves do not count toward that square footage.

The maximum number of children in your home, counting your own biological and adopted children, is six for a two-parent household. Narrow exceptions allow seven or eight, generally to keep siblings together or to place a child who has an established relationship with your family.⁸

Fire safety is evaluated using the state’s Family Foster Home Fire Safety Evaluation Checklist, which follows the National Fire Protection Association’s Life Safety Code.⁹ Functioning smoke alarms are a baseline. The inspection also looks at bedroom windows, egress routes, and general fire hazards.

Firearms, weapons, and explosive materials must be kept in locked storage when not in use.¹⁰ A foster parent may transport a child in a vehicle where a handgun is present as long as the foster parent is legally permitted to carry and the handgun stays in the foster parent’s possession and control. Hazardous chemicals, medications, and cleaning products need to be stored where children cannot reach them. Pets must have current vaccinations, and your agency will ask the vet for proof. If you have a swimming pool, expect additional fencing and supervision requirements; pools are not disqualifying, but the inspection is more detailed.

Training Before Licensing

Before you can be licensed, you have to complete the National Training and Development Curriculum (NTDC), a 19-hour pre-service program DFPS requires for all prospective foster and adoptive parents.¹¹ NTDC covers child development, the effects of abuse and neglect, trauma-informed care, and building relationships with children who have experienced loss. It has replaced the older PRIDE curriculum many agencies previously used.

Most agencies add hours on top of NTDC. An eight-hour SMART behavioral intervention course is common, and some CPAs include modules on medication management or working with children who have experienced trafficking. Your total pre-service training will likely land between 25 and 35 hours. Training is generally provided at no cost to you, either by DFPS or your CPA.

The Home Study

The home study is the most personal piece. A social worker visits your home, interviews everyone in the household, and writes a detailed report assessing whether your family is ready to foster. It functions less as a pass-or-fail inspection and more as an in-depth conversation about your life, your motivations, and your capacity to care for a child who has been through difficult experiences.

The interviews follow a structure set by state minimum standards. The social worker conducts individual interviews with each prospective foster parent, a joint interview with both parents, individual interviews with each child aged three or older in the home, and a family group interview with everyone in the household.¹² At least one visit must happen when every household member is present.

Expect questions about your childhood, your marriage or relationships, how you handle conflict and stress, your parenting philosophy, and why you want to foster. The social worker also uses these visits to confirm sleeping arrangements, check safety equipment, and get a sense of the household. The home study typically runs alongside your training, so both tracks move together.

Approval and Timeline

Once training is complete, background checks have cleared, and the home study is written, your agency submits the full package for approval. If you went through a CPA, the agency itself approves your home as “verified”; the CPA holds the license and your home operates under it. If you went directly through DFPS, the state issues the license. Either way, the reviewer looks at your application, background check results, home study report, and training records before deciding.

From first inquiry to license, the full process typically takes three to six months. Delays in background checks or scheduling can push it longer.

What You’ll Be Paid

Texas categorizes foster placements into service levels based on the child’s assessed needs, and the daily reimbursement rate rises with the level of care. DFPS, not you, assigns the level.¹³ These are the minimum daily rates a CPA must pay its foster families:¹⁴

Basic: $27.07 per day
Moderate: $47.37 per day
Specialized: $57.86 per day
Intense: $92.43 per day
Treatment Foster Family Care: $137.52 per day

These are floors. Some CPAs pay above them, and some offer additional stipends for clothing or school supplies. Most first-time foster homes start with basic or moderate placements; higher service levels require additional training and demonstrated experience. Reimbursement is meant to cover the child’s food, clothing, housing, transportation, and daily needs, not to serve as personal income.

Rules You Have to Follow

Discipline rules are strict and non-negotiable. Corporal punishment is completely prohibited in Texas foster homes. No hitting, spanking, or striking a child with a hand or any object. The prohibition also covers forced physical exercise like running laps or doing pushups as punishment, requiring a child to hold a position like kneeling, and assigning “unproductive work” as a behavior consequence.¹⁵ Even threatening corporal punishment is a violation. If physical discipline is part of how you were raised or how you parent your biological children, you will need to set it aside entirely for foster children. A violation can cost you your license and produce a founded finding of abuse or neglect on the central registry.

One other gap worth closing before your first placement: your standard homeowner’s or renter’s policy may not cover incidents involving a foster child. Specialized foster parent liability insurance exists, and some CPAs include it in their support package while others expect you to carry your own. Ask your agency explicitly what is covered and what is not.

Out-of-Pocket Costs

Most of the licensing process is free. Training comes through your agency and the home study is included. The costs that do come out of pocket are generally modest:

Fingerprinting: $37.75 per person for foster parent applicants, household members, and kinship caregivers⁶
TB screening: $40 to $75 for a skin test, more for a blood test
CPR and first aid certification: $70 to $150 for a combined course
Home modifications: variable; could include smoke detectors, a locking gun cabinet, pool fencing, or bedroom furniture. Some agencies offer small grants to help.

1
Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. Get Started – Adoption and Foster Care
2
Cornell Law Institute. Texas Administrative Code 26 749.2403
3
Cornell Law Institute. Texas Administrative Code 26 749.609
4
Texas Health and Human Services Commission. Chapter 749 Legislative Updates – Section 749.911
5
Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. Background Checks FAQ – CPS FAD Homes
6
Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. DFPS Background Checks – Fees
7
Cornell Law Institute. Texas Administrative Code 26 749.3021
8
Cornell Law Institute. Texas Administrative Code 26 749.2551
9
Texas Health and Human Services. Form 3004 Family Foster Home Fire Safety Evaluation Checklist
10
Texas Health and Human Services Commission. Chapter 749 Revision Memo – Firearm Storage Requirements
11
Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. DFPS – Foster Parent Training
12
Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. Guidelines for Foster and Adoptive Home Studies
13
Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. Service Levels for Foster Care
14
Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. Rates for 24-Hour Residential Child-Care Reimbursements
15
Cornell Law Institute. Texas Administrative Code 26 749.1953