Different types of fostering

The different types of placements

There are different types of foster care depending on the needs of both the child and their family. These include short-term care for just a few days or weeks, to long-term placements, as well as care for disabled children or children with behavioural problems.

Remand fostering: When young people are remanded by a court to the care of specially trained foster carer/carers.

Family and Friends/Kinship foster care: A child who is the responsibility of the local authority goes to live with someone they already know, which usually means a family member, such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers or sisters.

Specialised Therapeutic foster carers: Foster care for children and young people with very complex needs and/or challenging behaviour.

Teenagers: Children who need foster carers are teenagers, both girls and boys.

Special needs fostering: Children needing foster care include those with medical conditions or physical or learning disabilities, such as autism, hyperactivity, attention deficits, or reading difficulties.

Parent and child fostering: Usually a mother and her child are placed with foster carers to keep the child and mother safe and often to provide a foster carer assessment of the mother’s parenting skills.

Emergency: When children need foster care for a few nights.

Short term: When foster carers look after children for a few weeks or months while plans are made for the child’s future.

Respite care: When disabled children with special needs or children with behavioural difficulties regularly stay for a short period of time with a family so that their parents or usual foster carers can have break.

Long term foster care: Not all children who have to live permanently away from their birth family need to be adopted so instead they can go in to long term foster care.

There are other placements that fall in between those described above, and if you decide to become a foster carer and progress through the approval process, you will have plenty of opportunity to explore which type of fostering would be right for you and your family.

Contact us for more information and if you want to take the next step towards a career as a foster carer.