What is foster care?

Foster care, sometimes also called family based care, is when a family welcome someone else’s child[ren] into their home on a temporary basis.

For a variety of reasons, children sometimes need to be looked after in an alternative family setting to their own. It may be that their parents are ill, or in prison, they may be having relationship problems or the strain of being a single parent has got too much. Sometimes the child or young person has been hurt, physically or emotionally, and the only way to deal with the situation is to remove the child completely.

The length of time children stay with a foster family can vary from day care, overnight stays and regular planned weekends or holiday stays, to weeks, months or several years. In most cases, the children will be able to return to their family and foster carers and social workers aim for this wherever possible. In a few cases this is not possible and some children may stay in foster care for several years or be placed for adoption.

Being a foster carer means working in a team, working with social workers and the children’s families, with other foster carers, with lawyers, doctors and other professionals and of course with your own family.

Foster care can take up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week if you are looking after a very young child or it can be for much shorter periods for example having a disabled child to stay for a few hours a week so that their family can have a break.

Fostering offers the chance to make a difference to children’s lives and can be both rewarding and fun.