Types of fostering

 

Challenging and rewarding in all its forms, foster care can be split into the following groups:

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-term fostering can be exciting and very rewarding.

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 - This scheme is for young people in trouble with the police, who need a short stay away from their home environment where they are placed with specially trained foster carers prepared to be involved with their situation. Remand Fostering has proved to be a very positive alternative to restricting young people's freedom in secure accommodation where they could mix with other offenders and increase the possibility of their re-offending.

 

Long-term - Not all children who need to permanently live away from their birth family want to be adopted, so instead they go into long-term foster care until they are adults.

"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.