Types of Placement (including changes e.g. Adoption)

There are many different types of placements and some fostering agencies may not offer the full range. If you are considering adopting your foster child, please see: What If I want to Adopt my Foster Child or become a Special Guardian below.

Short-term / Task-centred Fostering:
Short-term (task-centred) fostering is a type of fostering for children and young people that is used when children first come into foster care.

The children are either in care proceedings or their parents or caregivers are no longer able to look after them. The aim of short-term fostering is to ensure a child or young person is cared for until they can return home, move into long-term fostering or become adopted.

Regular time spent with significant people such as birth family is an important part of short-term fostering.

Long-term Fostering:
Long-term fostering is where a child is fostered on a long-term basis. The child will be between 0 -18 years of age and could be fostered until they become independent. Long-term foster carers offer permanent homes where adoption is not suitable for a child/young person. 

It allows the child to feel like a member of the family and have a safe, stable environment to learn and develop. Long-term foster carers take on a parenting role, but the local authority and the birth parents have responsibility for them and birth parents could still be involved in the child’s life.

Task centred Disability Fostering:

Disability Foster carers offer both short and long-term homes to children with disabilities who are not able to live at home with their family. Some of our homes are adapted properties, although this is not a requirement for disability fostering. However, it can be ideal as some of our children are wheelchair users.

Short Breaks for Disabled Children:
Disability short break fostering provides regular short breaks for a child or young person with a disability, who lives at home with their family.

Disability short break foster carers offer specialist care to children with highly complex needs that include physical disabilities, medical disabilities or learning difficulties. The aim is to support families to live together and reduce family breakdown, through the provision of regular, planned short breaks.

Respite Care/Short Breaks:
Short break foster  carers also offer support to other foster carers. Foster carers sometimes need this support to ensure placements continue to succeed for all concerned, and respite care/ short breaks will be provided only when it is in the child’s best interests which includes improving placement stability. Any respite care/ short breaks provided will take full account of the child’s needs and be planned where possible.

Kinship Care:
People become kinship carers for various reasons. Some provide short-term help to family during crises, while others make a long-term commitment to caring for children.

These carers offer a home to children or young people who cannot live with their birth parents but can stay with extended family or family friends. This arrangement supports continuity in care, education, relationships, and preserves the child's cultural and personal identity.

Intensive Fostering (Resilience):
This programme forms the basis of the resilience model included in our support and training package.

Intensive foster carers provide long-term homes for children with complex needs who may be at risk of entering residential care or are currently living in residential settings. Intensive fostering is intended for young people whose higher level of need cannot be met within general fostering arrangements.

Intensive foster carers are either experienced foster carers or individuals with a professional background in supporting children and young people who have social, emotional, and behavioural difficulties.

Foster carers should be available at all times and generally not have other paid jobs, though employment may be possible once the child is settled. Usually, foster carers do not have dependent children at home, but exceptions can be made if considered suitable.

Turnaround:
Turnaround care provides emergency homes for children in crisis, inside of working hours, who are unable to live in their current home due to their circumstances.  These placements last up to 72 working hours whilst work is completed to support either a return to their permanent home, or where this is not possible a move to a longer term home.

Parent and Baby/Child Fostering:
For parents and their babies/children who are in need of support and assessment of their parenting skills.

Emergency Duty Service Fostering:
Emergency Duty Foster Carers provide homes for children who cannot remain at home due to family circumstances, offering support outside office hours. Care lasts up to 72 working hours while assessments and plans for a return home or longer-term placement are made. Foster carers work on a rota basis.

Private Fostering:
Private fostering is when a child/young person under 16, (or 18 if they have a disability) is cared for, for more than 28 days by an adult who is not a close relative, guardian or person with parental responsibility and the arrangement has been made between the carer and the parent.

It is not private fostering if the arrangement was made by a social worker or if the person looking after the child is an approved foster carer.

Sibling Groups:
Where brothers and sisters are placed together.

Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children:
Foster carers who provide a home for a child/young person seeking sanctuary and asylum from their own country of origin.

Staying Put Arrangement:
Staying Put arrangements are arrangements to extend the foster placements into a 'Staying Put' arrangement by agreement between the care leaver and the carer, in order to support the young person until such time that they are fully prepared for adulthood. This can be in place for up to 3 years and will end when the young person is 21. The young person will no longer be cared for under the fostering regulations as the Staying Put arrangement occurs when the young person turns 18. The arrangement ensures the young adult can experience a transition similar to their peers, avoid social exclusion and be more likely to successfully manage their independence when they do move on. Your Supervising Social Worker will discuss this with you when your foster child reaches the age 16 years as part of their care planning.

Supported Lodgings:
Supported lodgings is an alternative to foster care.  A supported lodgings host rents out their spare room and shares their home with a young person, giving them an opportunity to live in a safe, family environment where they can gain more independence and learn to prepare to live on their own.

Most young people that need the help of supported lodgings are 16 to 20 years old and are either care experienced or at risk of homelessness.

Shared Lives Placements
When a young person reaches 18 and has additional needs such as a physical disability, mental health issue, learning disability, foster carers may want to support the young person post-18 by becoming a Shared Lives carers. Shared Lives Schemes are run by the Local Authority and are separate from placements under the fostering regulations.

On approval the Fostering Service will decide how many children you are approved for, what age, gender identity and category of approval. There are times, however, when the fostering service may ask you to take a child/young person outside your approval range if it is felt this would be a way to meet the child's needs.

When this happens the fostering service can vary your approval for a short time either to allow for longer term plans to be made or for a review of your approval as a foster carer to be done so that your approval status can be changed in order to accommodate the child for a longer period.

The 'usual fostering limit' is three, so nobody may foster more than three children unless:

• The foster children are all siblings (then there is no upper limit); or
• The local authority within whose area the foster carer lives, exempts the carer from the usual fostering limit in relation to specific placements.

In considering whether to exempt a person from the usual fostering limit, the local authority must consider:

• The number of children whom the person proposes to foster;
• The arrangements which the person proposes for the care and accommodation of the fostered children;
• The intended and likely relationship between the person and the fostered children;
• The period of time for which they propose to foster the children;
• Whether the welfare of the fostered children (and any other children who are or will be living in the accommodation) will be safeguarded and protected;
• If a young person is staying in placement post-18 either via Staying Put or Shared Lives, this does not affect the fostering limits but consideration should be given to what the foster carer can realistically take on and the size of the accommodation.

Adopting a child is very different to fostering. This is about making a forever commitment to the child so this needs to be considered carefully. The most important thing is that there is a Permanence Plan for the child to be adopted and if this is the case and you would like to find out more, speak to your Supervising Social Worker, who will provide you with clear and helpful information. 'Fostering for Adoption' can be used to minimise delay and disruption for children, leading to early permanence.

If the decision is to proceed, an assessment will be done focusing on the potential of you as a prospective adopter and whether this will be in the long-term interests of the child; the child's needs will be central to the decision-making. You will receive the same robust assessment, preparation and training as other prospective adopters. Preparation and support for Fostering for Adoption placements will help you and, where relevant, your children, to manage the impact on your family life.

Special Guardianship or Long-term fostering may be another option.

Special Guardianship addresses the needs of a significant group of children, who need a sense of stability and security but who do not wish to make the absolute legal break with their birth family that is associated with adoption. It also provides an alternative for achieving permanence in families where adoption, for cultural or religious reasons, is not an option. You can apply for a Special Guardianship Order once the child has lived with you for one year immediately preceding the application.

Special Guardians have Parental Responsibility for the child and although this is shared with the child's parents, the Special Guardian will have the clear responsibility for day to day matters without consultation with others. The parents still have to be consulted and their consent is required to the child's change of name, adoption, placement abroad and any other such fundamental issues. A Special Guardianship Order made in relation to a Looked After Child replaces the Care Order and the Local Authority no longer has Parental Responsibility. In these circumstances, the Care Order is revived if the Special Guardianship Order is revoked.

Special Guardians may be supported financially or otherwise by the local authority and, as with adoptive parents; they have the right to request an assessment for support services at any time after the Order is made.

Special Guardianship has the following advantages as a permanence plan:

• The carers have Parental Responsibility and clear authority to make decisions on day to day issues about the child's care;
• There is added legal security to the Order in that leave is required for parents to apply to discharge the Order and will only be granted if a change of circumstances can be established since the Order was made;
• It maintains legal links to the birth family;
• There need be no Social Worker involvement, unless this is identified as necessary, in which case an assessment of the need for support must be made by the relevant local authority.

Special Guardianship has the following disadvantages as a permanence plan:

• The Order only lasts until the child is 18 and does not necessarily bring with it the sense of belonging to the Special Guardian's family as an Adoption Order does;
• As the child is not a legal member of the family, if difficulties arise there may be less willingness to persevere and seek resolution;
• Although there are restrictions on applications to discharge the Order, such an application is possible and may be perceived as a threat to the child's stability.

Long term fostering has proved to be useful for older children who retain strong links with their birth families and do not need the formality of adoption and where you may value the continued involvement of the local authority.

Long-term fostering has the following advantages:

• The local authority retains a role in negotiating between you and the birth family over issues such as contact;
• There is continuing social work support to the child and your family in a placement that is regularly reviewed to ensure that the child's needs are met;
• It maintains legal links to the birth family that can still play a part in the decision-making for the child.

Long-term fostering has the following disadvantages:

• Lack of Parental Responsibility for you;
• Continuing social work involvement;
• Regular Looked After Reviews, which may be seen as unhelpful to the placement;
• Stigma attached to the child due to being in care;
• The child is not a legal member of the family. If difficulties arise there may be less willingness to persevere and seek resolution;
• Post care and/or post 18 the carers have no legal responsibility towards the young person.