Types of Fostering

Short Term Fostering

Short term foster carers look after children for a temporary period until they can return to parental care, or go to live with other relatives or other carers on a longer term basis. Short term fostering can last from a few weeks to many months. Fp.c works to recruit short-term foster carers for local children in their local area.  This means that we target our recruitment activity on areas with the greatest need. Generally speaking, the greatest need is for:

• People who are able to care for older children (age 9 upwards) or teenagers
• People who are able to care for disabled children or young people
• People who are able to care for younger sibling groups of chidren
• People who are able to care for  a parent and child together

Long-term / Permanent fostering

Long term- permanent foster carers look after children until they are grown up. There is a national shortage of foster carers for older children (age 9 +) who need long term-permanent foster placements. It is a sad fact that some short term fostered children who cannot return to parental or extended family care have a very long wait before they are placed with new permanent - long term foster carers. In fact, some children never achieve this goal despite the best efforts of local authorities to find them a new home.

We work to help local authorities find suitable homes for these children. The act of offering and providing a home for these children could make a big difference to their lives. Long term- permanent fostering can be a very positive alternative to adoption for these children.

Local foster placements for local children

Since our inception as an agency in 2001, we have always worked work to place children as local to their home areas as possible, if this is appropriate in the circumstances.  We do this by targeting our foster carer recruitment activity on those areas where there is the greatest shortfall of foster placements.  Our  practice  in working to place children within their home local authority area has recently been enshirned in goverment regulations which now requires all local authorities to workto place children within 20 miles of their home area, whenever possible.  In practice,the  demand for foster placements varies from area to area. Please go to our  locations pages for more information about the demand for foster placements and our recruitment needs in your area.