There are many types of foster care. The application process is the same for all types. Long term is where you foster children who cannot go back to their birth family but do not want to be adopted. Usually, you’ll be their foster parent until they’re an adult. Short term is where you look after children for a few weeks or months while plans are made for their future. ‘Family and friends’ or ‘kinship’ is where you care for a child who you know or is part of your family – for example, your grandchild. Emergency is where you give a child somewhere safe to stay for a few nights. This is usually unplanned and you could get less than 24 hours’ notice. Respite and short breaks are where you care for children who have disabilities, special educational needs or behavioural issues while their parents or usual foster carers take a break. Remand is where you take care of young people who’ve been remanded by a court. You’ll usually need specialist training to be this type of foster parent. Fostering for adoption is where you foster babies or young children who you may go on to adopt. If you’re fostering for adoption you’ll be entitled to pay and leave from when the child comes to live with you. You need to have been approved as an adopter by a local council or agency to do fostering for adoption. Specialist therapeutic is where you provide specialist therapeutic care to children and young people with complex needs or challenging behaviour. This is for experienced foster parents or those with certain skills. Therefore you can try other kinds of Fostering dependent on what your skillset is. I knew a couple who specialised in complex needs Foster Care and I must say that I was in total awe of them.
They took even the most complex placements in their stride and they made the more straight forward Foster Care seem quite easy. Another couple I knew specialised in unaccompanied asylum seekers. This couple were ideally suited as the husband was Turkish but spoke other languages and his wife was a language teacher specialising in Middle Eastern languages. They were excellent at what they did and were able to provide excellent care to young people a long way away from home. I cannot really say that we specialised in anything in particular other than sibling groups, due to our experience and large house. Working with a large family placement is really about being well organised and working as a team with your partner and other involved professionals. It is hard work and it is taxing both physically and mentally but it’s important, in most cases, to try to keep siblings together. We once had a group of four siblings plus another single you man on respite as well as two of our own in our house. It was ‘interesting’ to say the least. There were children coming and going, different schools, different contacts, different Local Authorities and, therefore, different Social Workers. It was hectic but we were well organised and we noted everything in our logs and religiously recorded everything regarding meetings and school events.
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