Types of Foster Care (including changes e.g. Adoption)

Short-term Fostering:

Short-term carers provide temporary care for a child/young person, who is unable to live with their family. The child’s time with you can last from a few days or weeks, months or longer. Many children and young people will only need to be Looked-After for a short time while the family are assisted to address their problems, but other children may need to stay longer.  Some children and young people may need to be fostered because a Court has decided that they need to be placed away from their families for their own safety. Other children may be Looked-After as their parent has requested that the local authority cares for the child. Regular contact with significant people such as birth family is an important part of short-term fostering.  For younger children the foster carer’s role may be to help move the child to their adoptive family.  For other children the foster carer’s role may be to unify them with their parents or help them move to family members to secure their permanence.

Long-term Fostering:
Long-term carers offer permanent homes where adoption is not suitable for a child/young person.  They are expected to commit to caring for the child into adulthood, usually offering a Staying Put arrangement if appropriate

Short Breaks for Disabled Children:
These carers provide regular, usually pre-planned short breaks to children with disabilities living with their own families. This gives their parents or usual foster carers a break and can offer children new experiences, relationships and activities.

Respite Care:

Respite carers also offer support to other foster carers. Foster carers sometimes need this support to ensure they can continue to care for children successfully. Respite care will be provided only when it is in the child’s best interests which includes improving placement stability. Any respite care provided will take full account of the child’s needs.

Connected Carers:
These carers provide homes for a child/young person who cannot live with their birth parents but can live within their extended family network, or a friend of the family. This helps to provide continuity of care, family, school and friendships, networks and keeps the child/young person’s cultural and individual identity.

Specialist Fostering:
Specialist fostering is for young people who may have specific risks or vulnerabilities and have complex needs that cannot be met within general fostering. 

• Hope foster carers work closely with the Extended Hope services for children with mental health needs and provide care for up to 12 weeks to enable a child’s needs to be assessed and stabilised before they move to permanence – usually returning home to parents;
• No Wrong Door (TreeHouse) foster carers work within the TreeHouse hub to provide short to medium term care for teenagers who have additional risk and vulnerability;
• 1:1 carers provide care for one child who may be waiting for residential care, or who has been in residential care and needs intensive support as part of their return to family care.

Parent and Baby/Child Fostering:
For parents and their babies/children who are in need of intensive support and guidance.  The foster carer may also be involved in assessment of parenting skills which may form evidence in Court proceedings.

Emergency Care:
Emergency carers provide time-limited placements for a child/young person in emergencies, these placements usually happen out of office hours and sometimes very little will be known about the child(ren).

Mockingbird Home Hub Care:
The Fostering Network’s Mockingbird programme is an innovative method of delivering Foster Care using an extended family model which provides sleepovers and short breaks, peer support, regular joint planning, training, and social activities. This centres on a constellation where one foster home acts as a hub, offering planned and emergency sleepovers and short breaks, advice, training and support, to six to 10 satellite households. Relationships are central to the programme and the hub home builds strong relationships with all those in the constellation, empowering families to support each other and overcome problems before they escalate or lead to placement breakdown and increasing protective factors around children. The constellation also builds links with other families important to the children’s care plans and to resources in the wider community which can provide them with enhanced opportunities to learn, develop and succeed.

Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children:
Foster carers who provide specific care for a child/young person seeking sanctuary and asylum from their own country of origin. Carers will need to accept that they may know very little about the young person before they come to live with them and will have to help navigate systems such as the asylum process, as well as supporting children who may not have good English communication.

Supported Lodgings:
The Supported Lodgings Scheme is for young people 16 – 21 years old, who are not ready to live independently.  The scheme provides the opportunity to live in the home of an approved person, known as a Supported Lodgings Carer, who can provide a safe and supportive environment where young people can develop the essential life skills and confidence required for the next stage of their journey into adulthood.  Supported Lodgings providers are expected to provide 4 – 6 hours a week of support, advice and life skills to young people in placement as well as accommodation.

Staying Put Arrangement:
Staying Put arrangements are arrangements to extend the foster placements into a 'Staying Put' arrangement by agreement between the care leaver and the carer, in order to support the young person until such time that they are fully prepared for adulthood. They young person will no longer be cared for under the fostering regulations as the Staying Put arrangement occurs when the young person turns 18. The arrangement ensures the young adult can experience a transition similar to their peers, avoid social exclusion and be more likely to successfully manage their independence when they do move on. Your Supervising Social Worker will discuss this with you when your foster child reaches the age 16 years as part of their care planning.

Shared Lives Placements
When a young person reaches 18 and has additional needs such as a physical disability, mental health issue, learning disability, foster carers may want to support the young person post-18 by becoming a Shared Lives carer. Shared Lives Schemes are run by the council’s Adult Services and are separate from placements under the fostering regulations.

Fostering for Adoption
So that very young children can be placed with prospective adopters without delay, fostering for adoption allows approved adopters to be given temporary approval as foster carers. They care for the child as foster carers whilst court proceedings are progressed.  Adopters have to be able to accept the risk (albeit a low risk) that the court may not grant permission for the child to be adopted, and the child may return to their parents’ care.

During assessment your supervising social worker will explore with your how many children you are approved for, what age, gender identity and category of approval. This will be confirmed when you are approved.  No foster carer can care for more than 3 children unless they are all siblings of each other.  Connected persons foster carers are usually approved for specific named children.

There are times, however, when the fostering service may ask you to take a child/young person outside your approval range if it is felt this would be a way to meet the child’s needs and the fostering service has confidence you can meet their needs.  The request could be for you to foster more children than your approval or children who are older or younger than your usual age range.  It is always your decision about whether you agree to the request.

When this happens the fostering service can vary your approval for up to 6 working days either to allow for longer term plans to be made for the child or for a review of your approval as a foster carer to take place so that your approval terms can be changed in order to accommodate the child for a longer period.

The 'usual fostering limit' laid down in law is three, so nobody may foster more than three children unless:

• The foster children are all siblings (then there is no upper limit); or
• The local authority within whose area the foster carer lives, exempts the carer from the usual fostering limit in relation to specific placements.

In considering whether to exempt a person from the usual fostering limit, the local authority must consider:

• The number of children whom the person proposes to foster;
• The arrangements which the person proposes for the care and accommodation of the fostered children;
• The intended and likely relationship between the person and the fostered children;
• The period of time for which they propose to foster the children;
• Whether the welfare of the fostered children (and any other children who are or will be living in the accommodation) will be safeguarded and protected;
• If a young person is staying in placement post-18 either via Staying Put or Shared Lives, this does not affect the fostering limits, but consideration should be given to what the foster carer can realistically take on and the size of the accommodation.

If an exemption is needed so that you can care for more than three children, your supervising social worker will make arrangements for this to be requested from the Agency Decision Maker if you live in Surrey, or from the Local Authority in the area where you live if this is not Surrey. An exemption is not granted for an indefinite time and needs to be regularly reviewed to ensure it is still suitable.

Adopting a child is very different to fostering. This is about making a forever legal and emotional commitment to the child so this needs to be considered carefully. The child legally becomes a member of your family. The most important thing is that there is a Permanence Plan for the child to be adopted and if this is the case and you would like to find out more, speak to your Supervising Social Worker, who will provide you with clear and helpful information.

If the decision is to proceed, an assessment will be done focusing on the potential of you as a prospective adopter and whether this will be in the long-term interests of the child; the child’s needs will be central to the decision-making. You will receive the same robust assessment, preparation and training as other prospective adopters.

Special Guardianship or Long-term fostering may be another option.

Special Guardianship addresses the needs of a significant group of children, who need a sense of stability and security but who do not wish to make the absolute legal break with their birth family that is associated with adoption. It also provides an alternative for achieving permanence in families where adoption is not an option. You can apply for a Special Guardianship Order once the child has lived with you for one year immediately preceding the application.

Special Guardians have Parental Responsibility for the child and although this is shared with the child’s parents, the Special Guardian will have the clear responsibility for day-to-day matters without consultation with others. The parents still have to be consulted and their consent is required to the child’s change of name, adoption, placement abroad and any other such fundamental issues. A Special Guardianship Order made in relation to a Looked After Child replaces the Care Order, and the Local Authority no longer has Parental Responsibility. In these circumstances, the Care Order is revived if the Special Guardianship Order is revoked.

Special Guardians may be supported financially or otherwise by the local authority and, as with adoptive parents; they have the right to request an assessment for support services at any time after the Order is made.

Special Guardianship has the following advantages as a permanence plan:

• The carers have Parental Responsibility and clear authority to make decisions on day-to-day issues about the child's care;
• There is added legal security to the Order in that permission from the court is required for parents to apply to discharge the Order and will only be granted if a change of circumstances can be established since the Order was made;
• It maintains legal links to the birth family;
• There need be no Social Worker involvement, unless this is identified as necessary, in which case an assessment of the need for support must be made by the relevant local authority.

Special Guardianship has the following disadvantages as a permanence plan:

• The Order only lasts until the child is 18 and does not necessarily bring with it the sense of belonging to the Special Guardian's family as an Adoption Order does;
• As the child is not a legal member of the family, if difficulties arise there may be less willingness to persevere and seek resolution;
• Although there are restrictions on applications to discharge the Order, such an application is possible and may be perceived as a threat to the child's stability.

Long term fostering has proved to be useful for older children who retain strong links with their birth families and do not need the formality of adoption and where you may value the continued involvement of the local authority.

Long-term fostering has the following advantages:

• The local authority retains a role in negotiating between you and the birth family over issues such as contact;
• There is continuing social work support to the child and your family in a placement that is regularly reviewed to ensure that the child's needs are met;
• It maintains legal links to the birth family that can still play a part in the decision-making for the child.

Long-term fostering has the following disadvantages:

• Lack of Parental Responsibility for you;
• Continuing social work involvement;
• Regular Looked After Reviews, which may be seen as unhelpful to the placement;
• Stigma attached to the child due to being in care;
• The child is not a legal member of the family. If difficulties arise there may be less willingness to persevere and seek resolution;
• Post care and/or post 18 the carers have no legal responsibility towards the young person.