What is Fostering?
Our future lies in the hands of today’s children – giving each of us the responsibility to help them reach their full potential…especially those who require a little extra nurturing.
Fostering is looking after someone else’s children in your own home at a time when his or her family is unable to do so.
This can be due to many reasons; illness, relationship problems, family breakdown, or perhaps a situation where the child’s welfare is threatened.
Foster carers provide a safe, secure and stable environment for these children and young people, working with them, their family and the authorities to help most children return home as quickly as possible.
Fostering differs from adoption, in that an adoption order ends a child’s legal relationship with their natural family, while foster carers work towards ultimately reuniting child and family.
This may include having family visits or providing parents with information about their child. And, wherever possible, brothers and sisters are looked after in the same foster home.
Foster care can last for days, months or even years. Most children return home to their families but others may receive long-term support; either through continued fostering, adoption, residential care or by being helped to live independently.
