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What is fostering?

Fostering is offering care to a child who can’t stay with their birth family. The majority of children in foster care have been removed from their birth family because the child had been significantly abused in the home. Sometimes children are ‘relinquished’ by the family, meaning the family gave up care of the child to social care. Sometimes the children in care have travelled to the UK as unaccompanied asylum seeking children.

Unlike adoption, foster carers aren’t granted parental responsibility for the child, so foster carers can’t make decisions such as changing the child’s surname. Foster carers receive a fee for the work that they do, and they are supported throughout their fostering experience by a ‘team around the child’.

Children in foster care have a social worker (the ‘children’s social worker’) and the foster carers are also supported by fostering (or ‘supervising’) social workers. Other professionals who form part of the team around the child include education staff, health staff, and other specialists.

Foster care can last only a night for some children, but for other children foster care can last until the child is 25 years old. Some children choose to live in semi-independent care when they’re 16 years old, others choose to live independently at 18 and some agree with their social worker and foster carer that they can stay in the fostering home under ‘Staying Put’ arrangements until they’re 21 years old. Young adults who are continuing in further education can remain in care until they’re 25 years old.

Foster carers may choose to foster for their local authority, or an independent fostering provider. Sparks Fostering prides itself on being highly transparent, and on having high fees and allowances, and we only accept the strongest candidates as foster carers.