Therapeutic foster care (TFC) is a placement option for children in foster care who have needs that cannot be met in a traditional foster home setting. TFC provides children with a therapeutic environment while maintaining a family home setting, as opposed to a residential or group care setting. The need for TFC placement options for youth has increased with the passage of the Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA; 2018) which raises the threshold for youth to qualify for group care or residential treatment settings. Additionally, with high therapeutic foster parent turnover comes a more significant potential for children and youth to experience placement changes. Thus, a greater focus on therapeutic foster parent retention could help to ensure an adequate number of foster homes available. Using a cross-sectional, mixed methods approach, each aim of this dissertation will provide a unique contribution to the literature by focusing on aspects of the quality of the therapeutic foster parent experience, including role perception and awareness of and use of supports offered by their agency. Participants were recruited from six therapeutic foster care agencies on the east coast of the United States. Agency-level information was collected through key informant interviews with at least one individual from each agency. Therapeutic foster parents approved to accept TFC placements at each of the included agencies were asked to complete an online survey. The final sample consisted of 132 survey participants and 20 interview participants. This study found that both race and length of fostering experience were associated with role perception. Black foster parents viewed themselves as closer to the treatment professional end of the continuum compared to White foster parents and as length of fostering experience increased, foster parents’ role perception moved closer to the treatment professional end of the continuum. Race, gender, reason for fostering, and length of fostering experience were all associated with the percentage of support used within the past 12 months. Black foster parents used more supports when compared to White foster parents. Support use increased as length of fostering increased. Individuals of “other” gender used less supports than those who identified as women and those became foster parents with the hope of adopting used less support than those who became foster parents to foster. Further, combining survey and interview findings suggest that although participants are accessing supports offered by their agency, there may be a misfit between what agencies perceive to be helpful and what therapeutic foster parents need. Specifically, although survey findings suggest that therapeutic foster parents are accessing respite, qualitative interviews highlighted concerns related to respite that serve as barriers to accessing this service. The results of this dissertation provide evidence that can be used to inform best practices and program improvement efforts aimed at enhancing the experience of therapeutic foster parents. This study indicates the need for agencies to reconsider the services they offer to ensure that they are best meeting the support needs of therapeutic foster parents. The findings from this study also highlight areas where future research is needed and identify the potential need to reconsider how certain constructs are measured within this population.