Every Child Matters

What is Fostering?

Fostering is a way of providing a family life for children who cannot live with their own parents. It is often used to provide temporary care while parents get help sorting out problems, take a break, or to help children or young people through a difficult period in their lives. Often children will return home once the problems that caused them to come into foster care have been resolved and it is clear that parents are able to look after them safely. Others may stay in long-term foster care, some may be adopted, and others will move on to live independently.

Are there different types of fostering?

“There are no upper age limits for fostering, but fostering agencies expect people to be mature enough to work with the complex problems that children needing fostering are likely to have.”

Types of foster care include:

• Emergency - where children need somewhere safe to stay for a few nights.
  
  
• Short-term - where carers look after children for a few weeks or months, while plans are made for the child’s future.
  
  
• Short-breaks - where disabled children or children with special needs or behavioural difficulties enjoy a short stay on a pre-planned, regular basis with a new family, and their parents or usual foster carers have a short break for themselves.
  
  
• Remand fostering - where young people in England or Wales are “remanded” by the court to the care of a specially trained foster carer. Scotland does not use remand fostering as young people tend to attend a Children’s hearing rather than go to court. However, the children’s hearing might send a young person to a secure unit and there are now some schemes in Scotland looking at developing fostering as an alternative to secure accommodation.
  
  
• Long-term - not all children who cannot return to their own families want to be adopted, especially older children or those who continue to have regular contact with relatives. These children live with long-term foster carers until they reach adulthood and are ready to live independently.
  
  
• “Family and friends” or “kinship” fostering - where children who are looked after by a local authority are cared for by people they already know. This can be very beneficial for children, and is called “family and friends” or “kinship” fostering. If they are not looked after by the local authority, children can live with their aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters or grandparents without outside involvement.

Is fostering a job?
All foster carers are registered with and contracted to a local authority or voluntary or independent agency. Many foster carers are volunteers, but increasingly they are seen as professionals and receive a fee on a basis of being self employed.
What do foster carers do?
The foster carer’s role is to provide high quality care for the child. All children in foster care will be looked after by a local authority and the foster cares will work in partnership with the local authority to provide this.
The foster carers may also work with other professionals such as therapists, teachers or doctors to help the child to deal with emotional traumas or physical or learning disabilities.

What kind of people become foster carers?
Fostering agencies, including local authorities, need a wide range of people to meet children and young people’s very different needs.
It is best for children to live with foster carers who reflect and understand the child’s heritage, ethnic origin, culture and language, and fostering agencies need carers from all types of backgrounds.
People do not need to be married to become a foster family - they can also be single, divorced or cohabiting. Gay men and lesbians can become foster carers, although in Scotland they can only do so as single individuals living on their own. People in households with 2 or more unrelated adults of the same sex can’t foster in Scotland.
There are no upper age limits for fostering, but fostering agencies expect people to be mature enough to work with the complex problems that children needing fostering are likely to have, and fit enough to perform this very demanding task!

What is the difference between adoption and fostering?
Foster carers share the responsibility for the child with a local authority and the child’s parents.
Fostering is usually a temporary arrangement, though sometimes foster care may be the plan until the child grows up. This longterm or “permanent” fostering cannot provide the same legal security as adoption for either the child or the foster family but it may be the right plan for some children.

What is adoption?
Adoption is a way of providing a new family for children who cannot be brought up by their own parents.
It’s a legal procedure in which all the parental responsibility is transferred to the adopters.
Once an adoption order has been granted it can’t be reversed except in extremely rare circumstances.
An adopted child loses all legal ties with their first mother and father (the “birth parents”) and becomes a full member of the new family, usually taking the family’s name.

For more information, see www.baaf.org.uk

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