⇩ Download this handbook as a PDF
Fostering is looking after a child in a family setting and caring for them while their own parents are unable to do so. Foster care provides a safe, secure and stable environment for children, helping them to develop and succeed.
Fostering can be from a few hours to many years, depending on the needs of each individual child.
Around four-fifths of children who are looked after away from home are in foster care - and in one study (Farmer et al, 2007), 85% of children ticked a happy face to show how they felt about living with their foster family.
Children say they like their foster carers and appreciate being loved and treated as one of the family:
Children often report that foster care means they feel more settled and safer, enjoy being cared for and being in a family environment. Asked to name the top three things about being in foster care, children said (Who Cares? Scotland, 2012): 'happy family', 'stable home', 'feel really cared for', 'got more freedom', 'good food', 'brought up like a child and treated fairly', and 'having a safe home, living with a lovely stable family - being loved'.
In some parts of the UK, specific 'core principles and values' of foster care are set out in regulations or standards. In general, it's useful to bear in mind that foster care is about:
Fostering can be described as like being a parent but not the same as being a parent. Foster carers do not replace a child's birth parents, but they do need to offer good 'parenting' in many of the caring roles that they have, for infants through to adolescents.
Part of the challenge of the foster carer's role is to help children understand the different roles and relationships that they will have in their foster family and in their birth family.
Unlike most parents, foster carers also must be able to cope with children's reactions to separation, loss, upheaval and sometimes abuse and neglect. It is demanding to face up to the painful events and emotions that some children have gone through. However, given their difficult early experiences, it is also very rewarding when you see children responding to your care and settling down, thriving, achieving and enjoying their lives.
There are many different types of foster care to meet the different needs of children and their families.
Some children might need long-term fostering if members of their own family are never going to be able to bring them up. In some cases, it is not possible to know how long a child will need to stay when they first go into a foster care placement, or what the possibilities for their future care may be. Other children might just need a short-term placement while a family crisis is resolved.
Respite care (sometimes called short breaks or support care) is another type: a child has a short, planned stay with a foster carer - perhaps a weekend or a week - to give their parents or their main foster carers a break and to give the child a positive experience. It may be a regular arrangement or an occasional one.
You will need to think about what age groups and types of children (children with physical disabilities or learning disabilities, for example) you would prefer, or feel best able to, foster. The skills used in fostering young children are not the same as those needed for fostering teenagers, and place different requirements on the whole family.
Children usually go into foster care as a result of a number of complex and inter-related factors that compromise their safety or mean that their parents can't care for them properly. These factors can include:
All of these are serious challenges when they come one at a time. For some families, problems come in clusters and, although the labels may be the same, the detail and the meaning of such things as 'alcohol misuse' or 'mental health issues' are as varied as the families concerned.
Many families in difficulty cope without the help of social workers, but not all parents have someone to turn to when they need help with their children's care. Some also have especially complicated problems that make it hard for them to sort things out without professional assistance.
Children can become looked after at any age. Lorimer seek foster carers for children of different ages and needs.
There are two main routes into foster care. The law relating to children in care is more complex than this, but this general overview gives you a starting point. Most children looked after are fostered; however, there are other types of provision, such as children's homes, which may be more appropriate for some children.
There is no 'typical' or 'standard' foster carer - each fostering household is unique and valuable.
Foster carers may be at different stages of their family life - some may have grown-up children living at home, others may have no children. Foster carers are from all types of different ethnicities, cultures and religions. Foster carers can be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or straight. They can be single or in a relationship.
Some foster carers continue to work in other jobs; others will devote all of their time to fostering.
Everyone has some relevant skills from other aspects of their lives that they can bring to fostering. The assessment process identifies the skills that people have and those that they need support to develop. This variety is one of the strengths of foster care and means that different foster carers have different things to offer fostered children.
The state has the responsibility for acting as a corporate parent for children who enter public care. This means that a variety of public services and other organisations, such as independent fostering providers like Lorimer Fostering, collaborate to meet these children's needs.
The task of looking after children in foster care calls for teamwork, and foster carers are not expected to work alone. Foster carers require practical help and support, and so it's vital for them to feel that they can ask for what's necessary to enable them to give the best care to the children they foster - and ensure that they can look after their own family well too.
All kinds of foster carers have to take account of the need to work with children's families - this is a central part of fostering.
According to research, children emphasise that they want to maintain links with birth families (Wilson et al, 2004). Although they no longer live together, they are, and will be, their family for life. Children in foster care may still care for and worry about their birth family.
As a foster carer, you will need to support children in belonging to more than one family and the complicated feelings that this can evoke. You will also need to help children keep in touch with their families where it is in their best interests to do so. This is referred to as 'family time' or 'contact' and is an important part of the fostering role.
Fostering involves everyone in the household, not just the approved foster carer or carers. Fostering means that your family's lifestyle will change and, if you have sons or daughters living at home, they are invited to take part in Preparation for Fostering training to ensure they are prepared for how things will change.
Fostering can be hard work and emotionally stressful, and so it is essential to have a strong support network of friends and family, as well as to take the time to look after yourself. Learning and development will also help.
Like any other job, fostering involves keeping up-to-date and accurate records about the children you look after and their progress. It is important that information is recorded and passed between everyone involved in caring for a child, to make sure the child receives the care that they need.
There are regulations governing the responsibilities of public authorities to children placed with foster carers, including how often they are visited by their social workers.
All professionals need training to help them reflect on their work, build on their skills and keep up with new developments in their field. Foster carers are skilled and valued members of the professional workforce who also require and benefit from training.
Lorimer Fostering has a duty to provide training for foster carers, and all foster carers are expected to take up opportunities for learning and development. This embraces all kinds of learning, such as distance learning and work-based qualifications, as well as training courses.
At the heart of good quality and stable foster care is the relationship between the foster carer and the child. Through this relationship you will help a child to develop physically, emotionally and socially, to learn to trust and communicate, to build on their unique strengths and qualities, and to understand and develop their own identity.
One of the key messages from research into successful foster care is the importance of listening to children's wishes and feelings (Sinclair, 2005). This also helps to keep them safe from harm. According to The Care Inquiry (2013), children say they value people who:
Above all, children want to be involved in decisions about their own lives and to have their views listened to. As a foster carer, you will be in a privileged position to establish a warm, nurturing relationship with children which will enable them to express their wishes and feelings effectively.
While children are individuals with their own unique needs, one key theme from research is that they want an 'ordinary' family life in foster care and don't want to be treated as different - in particular, they want to be treated the same as foster carers' own children.
Children in care want the same opportunities as other children: to go to sleepovers, have their hair styled, have a social media account or mobile phone, and see their friends. To protect their privacy, they may prefer social care meetings not to be held at their school.
In the past, some children in care felt that the length of time taken to make decisions could mark them out as different from their peers, meaning they missed out on opportunities. In recent years there has been a push for the authority to take day-to-day decisions to be given to foster carers - this is known as delegated authority.
A knowledge of child development is key to fostering. Learning about child development will help you to understand children better - all children's behaviour is linked to their development but, for children in foster care, the picture may be further complicated by the impact of abuse and neglect, the quality of their attachments, separation and loss.
Each child is unique, developing at their own rate and pace, bringing with them their individual strengths and qualities. As well as thinking about development in terms of typical ages and stages, it is helpful to think about 'dimensions' of development - a child may reach the expected milestones in one area but fall behind in another. Seven dimensions of children's developmental needs have been defined by researchers (Parker et al, 1991):
These seven dimensions provide a helpful framework so that everyone in the team around the child can see how a child is progressing, what has been done, and what remains to be done to meet any developmental needs. Foster carers need information about each child they look after in relation to each dimension.
Secure, nurturing, consistent care offers a baby the best possible start in life and supports them through each developmental stage. Watch a baby and mother interacting: they copy, mirror and respond to each other's body language, facial expressions, voice, touch and gaze. This gradual, gentle process continues through childhood and adolescence, adapting to each new phase.
During the teenage years, young people start to develop more complex skills including planning, reflection, rationalisation, abstract thinking, impulse control and self-regulation. This complex learning - occurring alongside rapid physical change - makes adolescence a very demanding time, which may explain, at least in part, some behaviour we see in some teenagers, like risk-taking, moodiness, emotional intensity and confusion.
Many looked after children may not have received this positive stimulation and nurturing care. This can affect all aspects of their development and behaviour. Poor speech and language development may mean a child can't express themselves; poor emotional development may mean they cannot recognise or understand their own emotions or those of others. A child who can neither recognise nor communicate how they feel is likely to grow distressed and frustrated - feelings that may erupt into aggression, opposition and poor behaviour.
Looked after children may also have missed out on regular school attendance, play, being read to, and regular routines such as set bedtimes and mealtimes - so their intellectual and social capabilities may be less well-developed than their peers'. Development may be uneven: good self-care skills but difficulty controlling emotions; good verbal skills but poor fine motor skills.
Studies of children raised in extremely neglectful conditions (Kaler and Freeman, 1994) showed very poor language, cognitive and emotional development - and that neglect had physically changed the shape and volume of the brain. Crucially, further studies showed that some of these negative effects were reversed when children moved into new nurturing environments (Rutter, 1998; Eluvathingal et al, 2006).
Foster carers can play a key role in the lives of the children they care for. In the absence of a nurturing parent, they can be a positive, lasting influence by offering stable, nourishing care - promoting and supporting children's development across all seven dimensions.
Fostering in England is governed by the Children Act 1989, the Care Standards Act 2000, the Fostering Services (England) Regulations 2011 and the National Minimum Standards, and fostering services are inspected by Ofsted. Together these place the child’s welfare, safety and needs at the centre of everything we do.
Children’s social care is being reformed. The government’s strategy Stable Homes, Built on Love and the new Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 are strengthening support for children in care and care leavers - including ‘Staying Close’ support for care leavers up to age 25. Your supervising social worker will keep you up to date on what these changes mean for you and the children you care for.
Use these five questions to check your understanding of the handbook. Choose one answer for each, then select Check my answers. This is just for you - it is not recorded.
1. In foster care, the child’s welfare is:
2. A child accommodated under section 20 of the Children Act 1989 is:
3. ‘Family time’ is the current term for:
4. Which of these is one of the seven dimensions of a child’s development?
5. Research suggests the effects of difficult early experiences on a child’s development:
When you have read and digested this handbook, please complete the short form below to evidence that you have completed the course.
If a couple have completed the course together, please include both of your names in the form.
If you would like clarification, additional support or advice on any aspect of this material, please contact your supervising social worker or manager. See our Learning & Development Policies and your PDP for timescales for completing this course.