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What Are The Types Of Foster Care?
Foster care can last for days, months or even years, depending upon the circumstances and needs of the child.
The majority of FCA foster carers are able to take more than one type of placement.
Emergency Placements
This type of fostering involves caring for children who need somewhere safe to stay immediately, usually for a few nights. This can often happen at very short notice.
Short Term (Temporary) Placements
Short-term foster carers provide a temporary place to stay until the child can return home to their own family, move into a longer-term fostering placement or an adoptive family is found. This can last for a few weeks or months, sometimes longer.
Long Term (Permanent) Placements
Fostering is usually a temporary way of offering children a home until they can return to their own families. However, when a child cannot return home, decisions have to be made to find a permanent family for the child. For some children, such as those who are older or in regular contact with their birth family, long term foster care may be preferred to adoption.
Children and young people in long term foster care continue to be a legal part of their own family (even if they have only a limited amount of contact with them) but live with long term foster carers until they reach adulthood and are ready to live independently.
Respite Placements
Respite involves children living with their own family or foster carers, but having short stays with another foster family, to give their family/main carers a break. At FCA this usually involves looking after a child or young person who is placed with FCA foster carers for a weekend or 1-2 weeks
Parent and Child Placements
This type of placement is provided to a mother and/or father and their child/ren, where foster carers can provide support and guidance to the parent(s) and help them develop parenting skills.
Additional training is provided for foster carers providing parent and child placements. Some Parent & Child foster carers work as part of a professional team to undertake a formal assessment of the parenting ability of the mother and/or father.
Remand Placements
Remand foster carers look after young people who are remanded by the courts into public care. (In Scotland, young people may be placed in foster care as an alternative to secure accommodation). These placements are usually short term and require the carer to work closely with the youth justice/offending teams.
