There are many different types of placements and some fostering agencies may not offer the full range. If you are considering adopting your foster child please see What If I want to Adopt my Foster Child or become a Special Guardian below.
Short-term Fostering:
Short-term carers provide temporary care for a child/young person, who is unable to live with their family. The placement can last from a few days to a couple of years. The placement is temporary while plans are made and carried out. Regular contact with significant people such as birth family is an important part of short-term fostering.
Long-term Fostering:
Long-term carers offer permanent homes where adoption is not suitable for a child/young person. A long term foster child is likely to continue living with foster carers whilst in full time education and they will be expected to support the child with their living arrangements whether they continue to live with the carers or independently.
Short Breaks for Disabled Children:
These carers provide respite care to disabled children living with their own families. This gives their parents or usual foster carers a break.
Respite Care:
Respite carers also offer support to other foster carers. Respite care is offered for the benefit of the child and whilst we are aware that children and young people do not always want to go to another carer for respite we are also aware that foster carers do sometimes need this support to ensure the placement for the child continues to provide stability and to help ensure that the child’s needs continue to be met fully within placement.
Connected Carers:
These carers provide placements for a child/young person who cannot live with their birth parents but can live within their extended family network, or a friend of the family. These placements help to provide continuity of care, family, school and friendships, networks and keep the child/young person’s cultural and individual identity.
Specialist Fostering:
Specialist fostering is for young people who are going through difficulties and have a higher level of need that cannot be met within general fostering.
Parent and Child Fostering:
For parents and their babies who are in need of support and assessment of their parenting skills.
Emergency Care:
Emergency carers provide time-limited placements for a child/young people in emergencies, these placements usually happen out of office hours.
Sibling Groups:
Where brothers and sisters are placed together.
Bridging:
This forms part of a long term placement for a child/young person and can sometimes be for two years in duration. Carers work with the child/young person and their families towards reunification or prepare the child/young person for joining adoptive or long term/permanent fostering families or for moving to semi-independence.
Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children:
Foster carers who provide placements for a child/young person seeking sanctuary and asylum from their own country of origin.
Staying Put Arrangement
Staying Put arrangements are arrangements to change the foster placement into a ’Staying Put‘ arrangement by agreement between the care leaver and the carer, in order to support the young person until such time that they are fully prepared for adult hood. They young person will no longer be cared for under the fostering regulations as the Staying Put arrangement occurs when the young person turns 18. The arrangement ensures the young adult can experience a transition similar to their peers, avoid social exclusion and be more likely to successfully manage their independence when they do move on. Your Supervising Social Worker will discuss this with you when your foster child reaches the age 16 years as part of their care planning.
On approval the fostering service will decide how many children you are approved for, what age, sex and category of approval. There are times, however, when the fostering service may ask you to take a child/young person outside your approval range if it is felt this would be a way to meet the child’s needs.
When this happens the fostering service can vary your approval for a short time either to allow for longer term plans to be made or for a review of your approval as a foster carer to be done so that your approval status can be changed in order to accommodate the child for a longer period.
The 'usual fostering limit' is three, so nobody may foster more than three children unless:
In considering whether to exempt a person from the usual fostering limit, the local authority must consider:
Adopting a child is very different to fostering. This is about making a forever commitment to the child so this needs to be considered carefully. The most important thing is that there is a Permanence Plan for the child to be adopted and if this is the case and you would like to find out more then speak to your Supervising Social Worker.
If the decision is to proceed, an assessment will be done focusing on the potential of you as a prospective adopter and whether this will be in the long-term interests of the child. You will receive the same assessment, preparation and training as prospective adopters.
Special Guardianship or Long-term fostering may be another option.
Special Guardianship, addresses the needs of a significant group of children, who need a sense of stability and security but who do not wish to make the absolute legal break with their birth family that is associated with adoption. It also provides an alternative for achieving permanence in families where adoption, for cultural or religious reasons, is not an option. You can apply for a Special Guardianship Order once the child has lived with you for one year immediately preceding the application.
Special Guardians have Parental Responsibility for the child and although this is shared with the child’s parents, the Special Guardian will have the clear responsibility for day to day matters without consultation with others. The parents still have to be consulted and their consent is required to the child’s change of name, adoption, placement abroad and any other such fundamental issues. A Special Guardianship Order made in relation to a Looked After Child replaces the Care Order and the Local Authority no longer have Parental Responsibility. In these circumstances, the Care Order is revived if the Special Guardianship Order is revoked.
Special Guardians may be supported financially or otherwise by the local authority and, as with adoptive parents; they have the right to request an assessment for support services at any time after the Order is made.
Special Guardianship has the following advantages as a permanence plan:
Special Guardianship has the following disadvantages as a permanence plan:
Long term fostering has proved to be useful for older children who retain strong links with their birth families and do not need the formality of adoption and where you may value the continued involvement of the local authority.
Long-term fostering has the following advantages:
Long-term fostering has the following disadvantages: