What is the difference between fostering and kinship?


You may come across the terms "therapeutic care," "foster family home," "kinship care," and "adoption" when researching how to become a foster parent as alternatives to or partnerships with foster care. What exactly do these phrases mean?

Foster Care

Join UK Fostering if you're thinking about becoming a foster parent. Let's start by discussing the definition of "foster care" and the philosophy behind its mission. Foster care is the short-term, alternative care of a child who has been taken from their parent(s) or guardian(s) and placed in foster homes of related or unrelated people, residential facilities, childcare institutes, or even emergency shelters. Foster care is defined regardless of whether the placement is licenced or receiving payment for the child's upkeep. Join UK Fostering to start your wonderful journey as a foster parent.

Therapeutic Foster Care:

A foster kid who requires longer-term care due to greater physical, emotional, medical, or behavioural problems than the usual child is considered to be in therapeutic foster care. In the UK, this kind of foster care necessitates specialist training in addition to certification for foster parents, as well as the inclusion of community services as part of the child's treatment team.

Foster Family Home:

The foster family home falls under the category of foster care. The foster parent who is caring for the child full-time, every day at their house is known as the foster family. State agencies must demand training and certification of the carers in order to help assure safe placements for children and be eligible to receive federal funding to help cover foster care costs. As a result, in order to be accepted or licenced, the foster family and the residence must meet state requirements. UK Fostering provides 24x7 fostering support to our foster parents.


Kinship Care

According to studies, placing children who have been taken from their homes in the homes of relatives rather than strangers results in less distress for the kids. Kinship care is providing foster care for a relative's child. The goal is to keep the child with his or her parents or guardians as long as it is safe to do so; nevertheless, placing the youngster with family comes first. The youngster may be put in a group home or a non-kinship foster family home if placement with relatives is not feasible.

Kinship care is occasionally an unofficial familial arrangement when a relative will take the child in and thereby get bodily custody. The guardian relative does not receive a stipend from the child welfare agency to assist with the costs of caring for the child under this arrangement because there are no fostering standards to adhere to, the child has not been evaluated for eligibility for federal funding, and neither are there any fostering standards to comply with.

Kinship care can be formally established once the state and county have obtained legal custody of the kid, and the guardian relative is given a monthly allowance to help with child-rearing expenses. According to this arrangement, kinship care may be subject to the same certification and clearance criteria as a foster family home.


Adoption

Legal parental rights over the foster child in their temporary custody do not exist for foster parents. In fact, when it is safe to do so, the purpose of foster care is to eventually reunite the child with their birth family. However, when a kid is put for adoption, the agency and adoptive parent work hard to make sure that the child becomes a permanent member of their family. The adoptive parent will go through a certain process to finish all adoption-related tasks.

Some foster children may spend a considerable amount of time in foster care because they are unable to reunite with their birth parents. Although it's never the plan, doing this occasionally becomes necessary while looking for the child's forever home.

Not all foster kids will be up for adoption, and not all foster parents want to adopt. However, fostering a kid creates opportunities for adoption for foster parents who choose to do so. Researching this life-changing objective requires serious introspection as well as discussions with the foster agency. These are the first essential steps.

Foster care services are UK Fostering's area of expertise, and the organisation is always looking for people who want to be good foster parents. Please get in touch with UK Fostering for more information.


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