What is Fostering?
Fostering is a way of providing family life for someone else’s child in your own home when they are unable to live with their birth family.
Fostering makes positive and lasting differences to the lives of children or young people.
To help you understand fostering, it's important to realise that there are different types of fostering placements. Fostering can be short term or long term, and fostering can last for days, months or years. Many children return home to their birth families, but others may receive long term support, either through continued fostering, adoption, residential care, or by being helped to live independently.
Foster carers play a vital role in providing a safe, secure and stable fostering environment for looked after children and young people – encouraging positive and brighter futures.
Fostering with an Independent Fostering Agency (IFA)
Independent Fostering Agencies (IFA's), like Foster Care Associates (FCA), are private fostering companies working in partnership with Local Authorities to place looked after children and young people into fostering families registered to them.
FCA's approach to fostering is based upon the provisioning of an extended support infrastructure to deliver a range of therapeutic fostering support services to our foster carers, which produces some outstanding outcomes.
We also provide comprehensive and ongoing training for our carers.
What is the difference between fostering and adoption?
To further understand fostering, it's also important to distinguish fostering and adoption. An adoption order ends a child’s legal relationship with their natural family, whereas with fostering, the looked after children remain the legal responsibility of the Local Authority and/or their birth parents.
This includes placements that are long term in duration; the legal responsibility of the looked after child or young person still remains with the Local Authority and/or their birth family.
Interested in fostering? Enquire today
If you're interested in fostering or need more fostering information then Call Us on 0800 023 4561 or enquire online.
Content © Foster Care Associates 2010