What is Foster Care?
Guide to Foster Care - Part One
You probably know that foster care is a way of providing a home for children who can’t live with their natural parents. But what is foster care really all about? Foster care is about much more than providing a safe place to live.
To fully understand what foster care is, it’s helpful to look at the aims of foster care, the role of foster carers, along with the needs and expectations of children who live with foster families. But we can start by defining foster care.
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What is the Definition of Foster Care?
You can’t always take definitions at face value, but they can be a great place to start. You will see small differences in the way each fostering service provider defines foster care, but as you would expect, they all amount to the same thing.
The International Foster Care Organisation (IFCO) – who exchange ideas and share information about foster care on a global basis – defines it as…
A way of providing a family life for children who cannot live with their own parents.
They go on to say.
Foster care is often used to provide temporary care while parents get help sorting out problems, or to help children or young people through a difficult period in their lives.
Returning home from foster care is the best possible outcome for some children. But sadly, a lot of them remain in foster care for many years.
The Wider Meaning of Foster Care
There’s no real substitute for growing up at home within a caring family environment. Research shows that the developmental benefits of receiving consistent, positive care during childhood are huge.
Hopefully, you can remember feeling safe and secure as a child. Foster care aims to provide a family setting where a child feels safe and enjoys that same sense of stability.
A lot of children in care haven’t received the kind of parental care that promotes their healthy growth and development. Many have experienced abuse or neglect too, which often leads to their needs being complex.
What is Fostering – Foster Caring
Fostering a child means taking them into the heart of your family and making them feel valued and cared for without trying to replace their parents. The truth is, most children have parents and don’t want to exchange them for new ones.
Of course, some of the responsibilities are the same as those that fall on parents. They include things like:
- Providing a safe, nurturing homely environment
- Helping a child to pursue their hobbies and interests
- Promoting a child’s healthy growth and development
- Providing any necessary, emotional support and guidance
- Being an advocate and acting as a good role model
- Helping them to develop their morals and values
On top of this, there’s an expectation that foster carers will:
- Attend statutory appointments, meetings, and reviews
- Record information about a child’s day-to-day progress
- Support and implement the child’s agreed care plan
Foster carers work at the heart of foster care as part of a skilled team around the child. Those teams include social workers and other professionals, depending on each child’s unique needs.
Foster caring can mean supporting the relationship between a child and their parents. That doesn’t always mean you’ll have direct involvement with a child’s parents but can involve things like escorting them to and from family contact.
You might see this as a potentially tricky part of the role, but that’s not always the case. Supporting this relationship when appropriate, is important for a child and can also help to strengthen the bond between a foster carer and their foster child.
What is Foster Care from a Child’s Perspective?
Most children in foster care don’t want to be treated any differently from other children. They want an ordinary home life where they get support, stability, and normality.
Below is a short animation made with animator Jarek Radecki for BAAF (now CoramBAAF). Young children who live with foster families helped to write the script. It depicts their views of what can be good (and bad) living in care, and what makes for a good foster care experience.
Directed and edited by Geoff Johnston. Duration of video 3min 43sec
You can see from this video that children want to feel valued and cared for, as most of us do. They also want to feel listened to and understood, and they expect to receive fair treatment.
Children want carers to accept them for who they are and need support, regardless of what they say or do. They want carers to be able to put their values aside and see things from a child’s point of view.
The fact that there are different types of foster care can make it difficult to define. But hopefully, this has given you a better idea of what foster care is and what foster caring entails.
What is foster care? is the 1st part of the 6-Part Guide to Foster Care. Part 2 explains the different types of foster placements.
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