Foster care is a service for children and young people who cannot be with their parents because of a family crisis.
Foster carers take these children into their homes and look after them. Although this is a temporary arrangement, a child’s stay with a carer can last anything from a couple of days to several months.
No matter how long they spend together, foster carers create an environment in which young people can feel well looked after, valued and supported.
Foster carers need the skills, patience and understanding to work effectively with youngsters who have had difficult lives through no fault of their own, and whose behaviour may reflect this.
They must also appreciate how it feels for children to be separated from their own families. This is important because the work of a carer includes contact with parents and other relatives of the children they look after. As part of a team, which includes social workers and other professionals, foster carers champion the needs of children and strive to keep families together where possible.
All local councils run a foster care service for youngsters from their area. They are responsible for recruiting, assessing and preparing foster carers, and supporting them in their task. Councils pay carers a weekly allowance to cover the upkeep of the children they foster.
Carers make different levels of commitment to fostering. They can choose to provide care just overnight, at weekends or for short-breaks, although most carers foster "full-time". Foster carers make choices about the age and gender of the children they wish to look after. Some opt to provide specialist care for youngsters with disabilities, groups of brothers and sisters, children awaiting adoption, or young people in trouble with the law.
Young people they look after may return to their own family, find a new family or move on to live independently. Foster carers have the reward of knowing that they have made a positive and lasting difference to a youngster's life.
Are you looking after some else's child?
If you aren't an official foster carer known to social services, you may well be a private foster carer. Click on the link below to find out more: