What is foster care?

Fostering (or foster care) is the term used to describe an arrangement where a carer looks after somebody else's child. Usually, this is in the home of a foster carer.

Arrangements may be made privately between the child's parent and the foster carer or, more commonly in the UK, the arrangements may be made at the request of the parent, via the local authority social services department. Foster care can provide support to families with children in a range of circumstances.

Emergency or shortterm fostering

There are situations in which arrangements need to be made, sometimes at short notice, for a child to live with a foster family because the parent is temporarily unable to care for the child.

Respite care (Short-term breaks)

This is an arrangement whereby the parent can have a break from the pressures of caring for children. Usually, particularly for young children, arrangements are made for foster carers to provide family based respite care (rather than, for example, placing the children in a children's home). A typical arrangement could be that the child goes to stay with the foster carer one weekend a month. Ideally, a flexible arrangement would mean that if the parents were ill, or there was an emergency, then the children would be able to stay with the same foster carers, whom they already knew and whom the parents trusted.

Long-term foster care

This is an arrangement to provide care for a child for the foreseeable future. It could be for a teenager, until he or she becomes independent, or for younger children whose own parents are unable to care for them.

An arrangement for children to be cared for on a long-term basis through the social services department involves careful selection by the department's social workers of a foster family who would be likely to provide a secure environment until they were adults. Parents would be closely involved in this process. Important considerations would include where the foster family lived; their ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds, including languages spoken; their willingness to maintain contact in the future with significant people in the children's lives; and, in the case of a parent who was HIV–positive, their commitment to share care with the parents until he or she was no longer able to provide day-to-day care.

In a long-term foster care arrangement set up by the social services department, a social worker would have responsibility for visiting the children at regular intervals and the foster family would receive financial and social work support. The children would continue to use their family name and identity and maintain their legal relationship with members of their birth family. Adoption is sometimes suggested rather than foster care for young children who will be unlikely to have any family contact after the death of their parents. A discussion regarding adoption should take into account whether this would better promote the children's welfare, particularly in the light of the child's ethnic and cultural background. Legal adoption as developed in the UK is not well understood in some communities, where informal adoption is more usual.

Parents' involvement in foster care

Unless there are exceptional circumstances (such as issues of child protection), then parents who have requested that their children be accommodated by the local authority with foster carers will retain full parental responsibility. The local authority cannot make any decisions about the children without the parents' agreement.

Contact between parents and children while they are accommodated with foster carers is very important and a local authority will help with the transport or the cost of transport to ensure that contact is maintained.

Except in an extreme emergency, parents would have the opportunity of meeting foster carers before their child was placed so that they could be satisfied with the choice of placement and pass on important information to the carers.

Can friends or relatives foster?

Friends or relatives can foster children. In fact, before arranging for children to be placed with foster carers registered with the local authority, a social worker would always check out with parents whether there are friends or relatives who might be able to care for the child. Clearly such an arrangement is usually easier for children and young people, who would not have to adjust to living with strangers at a time when they might already be worried about their parents' health.

There are a number of different ways of making arrangements for children to be fostered by friends or relatives.

Arrangements may be private and informal, with children moving to stay with relatives or friends for short or longer periods. In certain circumstances (but not always), the social services department should be notified of the arrangement.

The arrangement may be made privately but with financial or practical assistance from the social services department.

The arrangement may be made through the social services department. This means that the local authority would take responsibility for accommodating the children, but instead of placing them with registered foster carers not known to the children, would place the children instead with friends or relatives. The regulations permit children to be placed with friends or relatives in an emergency for a period of up to six weeks, even though the foster carers have not been registered. However, if the arrangement is likely to be a continuing one (on a respite care or long–term basis), then the relatives or friends would apply to the local authority to be 'approved' as foster carers.

The advantages of children being fostered through the social services department are that carers receive continuing financial help (until the children are independent) as well as social work support. The main disadvantages are that there is inevitably quite a lot of bureaucracy involved; prospective foster carers may find the procedures quite personal and possibly intrusive; and there will need to be a social worker involved in visiting from time to time throughout the period the children remain with their foster carers.

Local authority information on foster care services

If there is already a local authority social worker involved with the family, then he or she can make enquiries about the availability of foster carers on behalf of the parents and children.

If the family is not already in touch with the local authority, then an enquiry can be made to the local area or neighbourhood office of the social services department. The enquiry may be handled by the duty officer in an Assessment Team or by a duty officer in a Children and Families Team.

An enquiry can be made about the availability of foster care and how to access the service without giving identifying information in the first instance.

It would be important to check what the local authority policy is with regard to providing information to foster carers about a parent's or child's HIV status. The local authority must ensure that the foster carer has information which is relevant to promoting the child's health. Most foster care agencies would not expect a parent to divulge his or her own HIV status, but would ask a parent's permission to divulge a child's HIV status to the foster carer (who would have to respect the confidential nature of the information).

The initial response from the local authority may be that there is no suitable foster carer available, taking into account the child's or parent's HIV status, the cultural and ethnic background, the number of children in the family, etc. However, the local authority has a duty to provide accommodation for children 'in need' and therefore should contact other foster care agencies, voluntary and statutory, to try to obtain the appropriate provision.

The local authority has a duty to ensure that wherever possible children stay within their family and community network: therefore the possibility of friends or relatives being able to care for the child, perhaps with help regarding finance and housing, should always be explored in the first instance.