Fostering explained
Fostering is caring for someone else’s child in your own home when they cannot live with their birth family. It can make positive and lasting differences to the lives of children and young people.
There are many different reasons why children cannot live with their birth family, but it is usually because of problems their parents are experiencing such as illness, relationship difficulties or substance misuse, or it’s because a child has been neglected or abused.
When a family has problems, our children’s services are committed to working with the parent or parents to make the home a safe place for the children. Whilst this is taking place we need to place the child in a family situation where they will feel secure and cared for. That’s where foster carers come in, looking after these children in their own homes, allowing time for difficulties to be sorted out.
Foster carers provide a safe, warm, caring and stable home for a child as long as they need it, sometimes for a few days whilst others will live with their foster family for their entire childhood and beyond. For many children and young people, fostering is often their first positive experience of family life.
Babies, children and young people of all ages need foster carers from all backgrounds with a wide range of life, work and care experiences.