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Types of Fostering

Every child and young person is an individual.

That’s why Flourish Fostering offers various kinds of fostering placements for children and young people, which have been designed around their needs.

What Does Fostering Involve?

Being a Foster Parent is a rewarding and fulfilling career that provides the opportunity for a child to be cared for as an individual and develop bonds with adults to ensure their needs are met in order to achieve a positive outcome. Fostering is caring for children in your own home, providing them with day to day support and a safe and secure environment when their birth parents or family are unable to look after them.

Why Might a Child Come Into Fostering?

Every fostering experience is different and every foster child and family is unique. Children may come into care as a result of a parent’s illness, relationship problems, family breakdown or a situation where their welfare has been threatened.

Many of them will have experienced neglect and physical, emotional or sexual abuse, and may have faced loss and separation from their birth family. All of these events can induce trauma so it takes patience and understanding, and time, for many children to build a trusting relationship with new adults and to feel safe and settled in a family of strangers.

Foster family having a picnic with their dog

As a Foster Parent, a child in your care will remain the legal responsibility of the Local Authority and/or their birth parents. Fostering is different to adoption, where the legal rights of a child are permanently transferred to their adoptive parents.

Children in foster care may sometimes express their feelings and trauma through difficult or challenging behaviour. Others can be withdrawn and may find it difficult to build trusting relationships with adults as past experiences can have an effect on their behaviour and development.

Managing Behaviours and Building Resilience

Flourish staff will help you to manage all the different kinds of feelings and explain what is going on behind the behaviour, and in doing so will be building your resilience and success in fostering work.

Once you establish a bond of trust with your foster child, it can be the most rewarding experience you could imagine.

What Are the Different Types of Fostering?

The types of fostering you can offer will depend on your personal circumstances, but many of our Foster Parents are approved to offer more than one type of placement.

We offer specialised training, so you can fully support a child or young person, in your chosen fostering placement.

Short Term Fostering

Short term fostering involves caring for a child or young person on a temporary basis for a few days, weeks, months or even a couple of years

Long Term Fostering

Long term fostering involves looking after a child or young person on a permanent basis, providing guidance, support and encouragement throughout, until they reach adulthood and are ready to live independently.

Fostering Siblings

We are committed to keeping brothers and sisters together wherever possible. Can you provide a home for two or more siblings?

Emergency Fostering

For a variety of reasons, children can need foster care in an emergency, where there is no time for introductions prior to a child who is in crisis coming to live with a foster family.

Parent and Child

For different reasons a mother and baby/child, father and baby/child or even a mother and father with their baby/child may need assistance and support from Foster Parents.