Introduction

This page tells you:

• What is fostering?
• Why do children need fostering?
• What is the difference between fostering and adoption?
• Why are more foster carers needed?
• Who can foster?
• Do foster carers get paid?
• Do foster carers receive training?

What is fostering?
Fostering is caring for children and young people in your own home while their own parents are unable to look after them. Local authorities have a responsibility to look after children in their care who are in need. Foster care can be a good way of meeting these children's needs. Many children who are fostered will return to their own families, but some remain with foster carers until they become young adults.

Why do children need fostering?
Children need foster care for lots of different reasons. For example, their parents may be ill, in prison, or having relationship problems. Many of them will have been neglected or abused. Three out of four fostered children return to live with their own families, so they need a secure family environment while we work with their parents to make sure they can return home. Other children, unable to return home, need long term settled care away from their families.

Fostering is about more than just 'parenting'. It's a team of people working with parents and social workers to care for children.

Fostering is not something that can be done in isolation. It affects your family and close friends. If you have children of your own, think carefully about how they will cope with sharing you, their home and their things. If you have a partner, fostering must, or course, be something you both want to do.

What is the difference between fostering and adoption?
Fostering is usually a temporary way of offering children a home until they can return to their own families. However, when a child cannot return home, decisions have to be made to find a permanent family for the child. In some cases foster carers will make a commitment to care for the child until they are ready to leave public care, at around 17 or 18 years old.

Children and young people in foster care continue to be a legal part of their own family, even if they have only a limited amount of contact with them. Some children will be adopted, and this makes them legally part of a new family.

An adoption order ends the child's legal relationship with their original family and makes the adopters the child's legal parents. Adoptive parents have the same rights and responsibilities for the child as if they had been born to them.

Adoptive families are needed as well as foster carers. If you are interested in adoption click here.

Why are more foster carers needed?
On an average day there are over 73,000 children in care in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Over 50,000 of these children are placed with foster carers. Many more children and young people move in and out of foster homes over the course of 12 months. To provide the best possible service to children, more foster carers are needed. Across the UK an extra 10,000 foster carers need to be recruited. Could one of these new carers be you?

In Stoke-on-Trent, we need as many foster carers as possible to meet the wide range of needs particularly for older children, teenagers and brothers and sisters. The more carers there are, the more likely it is that children will be placed with local families that are best suited to care for them. For example, some carers are very good with younger children and some carers are better with older children.

Who can foster?
Almost anyone can apply to be considered as a foster carer. Foster carers are as diverse as the children they look after. You can be gay or straight, single or married or in a long term stable relationship. You can own your own home, rent accommodation or be receiving housing benefit. As long as you have time, a spare bedroom and space in your life for children, we are waiting to hear from you.

People from all ethnic origins are needed. Children benefit from living with families who share their own culture, language, religion and food. Staying with strangers can be a difficult experience for many children, without the child having to cope with a family that eats different food, speaks a different language, follows different religious or social customs, or has a lifestyle totally different from their own.

Because of the need to protect children, the application process will include criminal records checks to exclude people who would not be considered suitable to be foster carers. A conviction will not necessarily stop you from being accepted but will mean that we have to carefully consider your application. It is best to discuss any convictions you have with your social worker when you first apply to become a foster carer.

Do foster carers get paid?
Foster carers are given an allowance that should cover all the costs of caring for a child or young person. No foster carer should be out of pocket. It is best to talk to your fostering social worker about this when you begin the assessment process. Do not be afraid to ask questions; it is important to be clear about the financial support available.

Stoke-on-Trent Fostering Service has introduced a Payment for Skills scheme, which is a skills based career progression scheme for foster carers.

Do foster carers receive training?
Children who need fostering have often experienced a lot of distress and disruption in their lives. Caring for these children can be challenging, and you will need a range of skills to help you cope with the situations that arise. Even if you have experience of caring for your own children, or of caring for children professionally, you will need to develop an understanding of the needs of children who are living away from their own families.

You will be asked to take part in courses where you can learn about working with children's parents, managing challenging behaviour and helping children to cope with their feelings about separation from their families.