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Types of foster care

There are various types of foster care, each fulfilling different needs of the children and families who we work with. 

If you choose to Foster, you may want to consider the type of fostering that best suits you. We will also talk about this with you during your assessment.

Long term placements

Provide a stable home for children who cannot return to their birth families but do not wish to be adopted.

You’ll support them until adulthood.

Short term placements

Care for children temporarily while plans are made for their future – usually spanning weeks or months, and often whilst courts are still deciding the long-term plans for the child.

Mockingbird fostering

This innovative foster care model involves carers forming a group and using an extended family model, which involves short breaks, sleepovers, group outings and fostering as part of a community.

Helping carers feel connected, confident and never alone in their fostering journey.

Bridging placements

Work with a young person as they plan and prepare to join an adoptive or long-term placement.

Emergency placements

Be on call to receive unforeseen emergency placements for individual or sibling groups, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

This role is normally covered by a highly experienced foster carer.

Parent and child placements

This involves taking in a child and their mother and/or father to provide guidance and develop their parenting skills.

Many Parent and Child placements end when a parent returns to their own home with their children, having successfully cared for their children together in foster placement.

Solo placements

These provide a higher level of support and supervision for children whose needs are very specific and complex.

Where this is agreed to, we will compensate you for caring for just one child and also provide additional support.

Sometimes, a solo placement may be a specialist step-down placement where a child is ready to leave residential care and re-integrate into a loving family setting.

Remand foster-placements

Carers who look after young offenders on a short-term basis, sometimes just overnight. Placements can be made with very little notice, maybe on the same day.

Alternatively, placements may be made on a more planned basis, for example, for young people leaving custody.

This is for highly experienced foster carers, or for those transferring from a similar role, who wish to foster. Extra support will be provided for those who wish to become remand foster carers.

Short breaks foster placements

Very short-term care for children with disabilities or additional needs to help support a family.

This may mean looking after a child or a sibling group for anything from a couple of days, a weekend a month, to a week or two at a time, sometimes on a regular basis.

You will get to know the child and the family over a long period of time and become a regular and familiar support to the family, caring for the child/ren at regular planned intervals, to help maintain their ability to stay at home for the long term.

Weekender

Become a Weekend Foster Carer in Barking and Dagenham!

Have you ever wanted to make a real difference to a child in our community, but felt you could not commit to full-time fostering?

Here is a new way to change a young person’s life by giving one weekend a month.

As a Weekender, you build a long-term, supportive relationship with one child or young person.

You might bake together, go swimming, visit local parks, try new hobbies or simply hang out and chat. It is a role that feels more like being a foster aunt, uncle or grandparent than a parent.