Long-Term Fostering or Adoption?

If you're not sure about long-term/permanent fostering or adoption, you might be considering taking a kid into your house to live as a member of your family. It's crucial to keep in mind that long-term fostering and adoption are not the same things at first glance. The local authority will still be legally responsible for a child put in long-term foster care. Contrarily, when a kid is adopted, the adoptive parents take on the child's legal obligations. This is their biggest distinction, so if you're attempting to decide which is best for you, you should think about why you want to raise kids in the long run. Are you seeking for a child to legally join your family, or are you willing to support a child through adulthood while still considering them a member of your family, so long as they keep their family name and any other close ties?

The term "long-term foster care" refers to a care plan and the kind of care that will be best for the kid, not just the duration of the placement. Long-term or permanent foster care should signify that the child's care is to be provided in a particular fostering placement for the foreseeable future and typically until they attain adulthood and leave care.

Social workers typically visit long-term foster situations less frequently, which is to their advantage, but regular reviews do happen. To guarantee that the kid's evolving needs are fulfilled as they grow and mature into adulthood, however, comprehensive support must continue to be provided for both the foster child and foster carer. Foster parents may want this assistance to continue managing the child's evolving needs, to deal with shifting dynamics with the biological family, or to assist the young person in getting ready for independence, among other things.

Regrettably, some kids remain in a foster family's care for a long period without any explicit planning to incorporate long-term foster care. It is intolerable to have such shoddy care planning, when decisions are not made or are not carried out, allowing a foster care placement to go off in an unclear way. Children need to feel secure in their ability to remain with the same family up until adulthood. However, as Fostering Network points out, "This does not mean that the child would inevitably see the fostering family as a "permanent" family to the exclusion of the birth family. Respect for the birth family's continued role and encouragement for the kid to keep in touch with them unless doing so would be damaging to the child's interests are two of the main benefits that long-term foster care can provide. (The Fostering Network, n.d.)

We hope you will think about taking on a long-term foster care role so that you may help a kid who is unable to live with their biological family establish a stable relationship. Children who are placed in long-term foster care require a secure, caring home where they can feel at peace and truly at home. They may have previously lived in more than one foster family or in a children's care facility, so they require a foster family that will commit to them and support them for the remainder of their childhood.

Please get in touch with UK Fostering if you have any questions about how to become a long-term foster care provider; we would be pleased to talk further.