The following definitions apply to youth foster home licensing rules:

(1) "Department" means Department of Public Health and Human Services.

(2) "Foster child" means a person under 18 years of age who has been placed in a youth foster home by the department, another state agency, a tribe, or a licensed child placing agency. A youth over the age of 18 may remain in foster care if still in secondary school.

(3) "Foster parent" means a person responsible for the day-to-day care, supervision, and guidance of children in a youth foster home.

(4) "Kinship foster home" means a youth foster home in which substitute care is provided by a member of the child's extended family, a member of the child's or family's tribe, the child's godparents, the child's stepparents if the child is placed with the stepparent by the department, or a person to whom the child, child's parents and family ascribe a family relationship and with whom the child has had a significant emotional tie that existed prior to the agency's involvement with the child or family.

(5) "Secondhand smoke" or "environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) " is a mixture of the smoke given off by the burning end of a cigarette, pipe, or cigar, and the smoke exhaled by smokers.

(6) A "serious incident" includes, but is not limited to suicide attempts, use of physical force by a foster parent or any member of the foster parent's household, sexual contact with the child by anyone, emergency medical treatment, injury to a foster child which requires hospitalization, physical assault by the foster child, involvement with law enforcement by any member of the foster parent's household, including a foster child, or the death of a foster child.

(7) "Substitute care" or "foster care" means the full-time care of a child who is placed in a youth foster home by the department, another state agency, tribe, or licensed child placing agency for the purpose of providing food, shelter, security and safety, guidance, direction, and, if necessary, treatment, to children who are removed from or who are without the care and supervision of their parents or guardians.

(8) "Therapeutic foster home" means a youth foster home operating under the direction of the clinical staff of a licensed child placing agency when such agency has a contract with the department to provide therapeutic foster care services. A therapeutic foster home provides substitute care to only one child unless it is approved by the department to provide care for a second child needing therapeutic services. The therapeutic foster home may provide services to a foster child who does not need therapeutic services only as provided in ARM 37.51.603.

(9) "Youth foster home" or "foster home" means a youth care facility in which substitute care is provided to one to a maximum of six children or youth other than the foster parents' own children, stepchildren or wards.