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How does it work? of Children in care
Children go into care when their current parent or guardian is unable to look after them, or if the child’s health, safety or well-being is at risk. They might also go into care because they have behavioural problems or a disability or condition that is difficult for non-specialist carers to cope with.
Foster care can be a long or short-term solution. It provides a new home for the child, with people who have taken responsibility for their care, and a supportive environment in which they can grow up. This can be a temporary home while parents or guardians are receiving training, taking respite (a rest period) from caring for difficult children, or while they are not present (for example living abroad, in hospital, or in prison). It can also be a place where a child lives prior to adoption.
The foster care available depends on local facilities, and what is suitable for the individual child. These may include:
- Large foster centres or foster homes - these are facilities where several children are looked after by a team of carers.
- Individual homes - this is when an individual, couple or family take a child into their own home, to provide foster care in a family environment.
- Friends and family foster care - this is when a member of the child’s family, such as a grandparent, or a close friend, is given the status of foster parent.
- Private fostering - when someone who is not a relative fosters a child, without involvement of an agency or social services.
Current government guidelines suggest that a family environment is the most nurturing and secure situation for a child. Matching a child with a long-term foster family is a gradual process, supervised by social services. As with adoption, children will visit, or be visited by, prospective foster families. This enables them to get to know each other and helps the child feel more comfortable in their new surroundings. They may live in a larger children’s home while this process is taking place. Whenever possible, the child’s views on their placement are taken into account, but in the case of short term and emergency placements this may not be practicable.
When children are only temporarily in care, and there are plans to return them to their family, it is important for children to keep in touch with their parents. Sometimes several visits will take place before the child is goes home permanently.
There are other ways in which children leave care. Occasionally, when children have been in long-term placements, their foster parents may apply to adopt them, or other people may adopt them out of the foster home. Other children grow into young adults while in foster care and leave to live independently. Preparing these older fostered children for adult life is part of the foster parents’ role. A Care Order (where social services have parental responsibility for a child) automatically ends when the child reaches the age of 18 but social services have a responsibility to look after the young person (helping them find somewhere to live, for example) until they are 21.
