Types of fostering explained: which kind of foster carer could you be?

Why fostering comes in different types

Fostering is not one job. Children come into care for different reasons and with different plans, so services describe placements by type: how long the child is likely to stay, what the plan is and what care they need.

You apply and are assessed in much the same way for any of them. What differs is your terms of approval, the training offered and, for some specialist roles, whether a fee is paid on top of the child's allowance. Not every service recruits for every role.

Short-term fostering

Short-term fostering means caring for a child while decisions are made about their future. How long that takes varies: GOV.UK says up to two years in England, the Scottish Government says usually under 12 months, and Foster Wales describes anything from an hour to a year.

The child often has regular contact with their birth family, and the plan may be to go home, move to relatives, be adopted or join a long-term foster family. Your job is to give stability meanwhile and support whatever comes next. It suits people who can live with uncertainty and say goodbye well.

Long-term fostering

Long-term fostering is for children who cannot return to their birth family and for whom adoption is not the right plan. You usually care for the child until adulthood, often as a family relationship for life. Unlike adoption, legal responsibility stays with the local authority, and the child usually keeps some contact with their birth family.

Matching is careful, and long-term homes are often needed for older children and teenagers. In Scotland a child can also live with you permanently under a court permanence order.

Emergency fostering

Emergency carers take children at very short notice, sometimes with less than 24 hours' warning and often late at night or at weekends. The placement is usually for a few nights while the service learns more and arranges something longer. You need to be reachable, flexible and ready with a spare bed, and calm with a child who may be frightened and arrive with very little.

Respite and short breaks

Respite covers two roles. One is looking after a child who lives with other foster carers while they take a break or go into hospital. The other, usually called short breaks, is regular planned care for disabled children or children with additional needs who mostly live at home; a typical pattern is one weekend a month.

Both are often suggested for people who work full time. Respite carers get the same approval, training and support as full-time carers, and short-break carers are matched for their skills and usually get specific training.

Parent and child fostering

A parent, most often a young mother, lives with you together with their baby or young child; the arrangement can begin during pregnancy. The aim is to help the parent build the skills and confidence to care for their child and, often, to assess how they are managing.

You are not usually the one providing day-to-day care: you support, encourage and observe, and your observations feed into the assessment. Placements are time-limited. It suits non-judgemental carers who are comfortable observing, recording and holding clear boundaries.

Sibling groups

Services try to keep brothers and sisters together wherever it is safe, and carers who can take two or more siblings are in steady demand. The law in England and Wales sets a usual fostering limit of three foster children per household, but it does not apply where all the children are siblings of each other.

Space matters. England's national minimum standards say each foster child aged three or over should have their own bedroom; sharing within a sibling group is agreed only after a risk assessment that records the children's wishes.

Fostering teenagers

Many services say they need more carers for teenagers, and misconceptions about young people in care make them harder to place. Fostering a teenager means encouraging independence while keeping boundaries, expecting some mistakes and supporting them through those, backing education and aspirations, and teaching life skills such as cooking and budgeting.

It suits patient, consistent people who will listen and act as an advocate. Some services train existing carers of younger children to move to teenagers.

Therapeutic, specialist and other skilled roles

Specialist therapeutic fostering is for children with very complex needs or behaviour that challenges, often rooted in trauma, neglect or abuse. Carers get support from a trauma-aware team and therapeutic services, and the role usually goes to experienced carers or people with relevant skills. Many services pay a fee on top of the allowance. Other skilled roles include:

• Remand fostering: a home for young people aged 10 to 17 remanded by a court while awaiting trial or sentencing, with dedicated training and assessment.
• Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and young refugees: separated from their families and often distressed; services match language and culture where possible and provide specific training.
• Children with disabilities: offered across short-term, long-term, emergency and short-break care.

Fostering for adoption and early permanence

Early permanence covers two arrangements in which approved prospective adopters foster a baby or young child who may later be adopted by them. In fostering for adoption, adoption is the likely plan but legal authority is not yet in place; in concurrent planning, work to return the child to the birth family is still under way.

Carers must already be approved adopters and get adoption pay and leave from the day the child moves in. The trade-off is uncertainty: the child may go home, move to relatives, or the court may refuse a placement order, and carers take the child to regular supervised family contact meanwhile. Services should prepare carers thoroughly and never rush them.

Kinship and connected persons fostering

Kinship fostering (family and friends or connected persons care in England) means a child in the care of the council or health trust lives with someone they already know, usually a relative or family friend. It differs from informal family arrangements, where the council is not involved, and from private fostering (see the FAQ).

Because the child often needs a home at once, English regulations let a council temporarily approve a connected person for 16 weeks, extendable by a further eight in exceptional circumstances, while the full assessment and panel take place. During that time the carer should receive the same allowance as other foster carers. Other legal routes, such as special guardianship, carry different support.

Staying Put and staying on after 18

A foster placement ends at 18, but each nation has an arrangement that lets a young person stay with their former carer: Staying Put in England, When I Am Ready in Wales, Continuing Care in Scotland and Going the Extra Mile in Northern Ireland. The first three run up to 21; Northern Ireland's covers 18 to 21, extended to 25 for those in education, employment or training, though its statutory basis is not yet in force.

After 18 the arrangement is no longer governed by fostering regulations. The Fostering Network reports that there are no minimum post-18 allowances, that many services reduce payments and stop fees, and that some carers face re-approval when the arrangement ends, so ask for the written policy. Supported lodgings, for 16 to 21 year olds leaving care, is a separate role whose hosts are not approved foster carers.

How the type affects your approval, training and pay

When you are approved, the service sets your terms of approval: how many children, their age range and the categories of placement. It can ask you to consider a child outside those terms if that best meets the child's needs, by varying or reviewing your approval. Specialist roles usually need a specific approval, extra training and sometimes previous fostering experience.

Every approved carer receives an allowance for the child's costs, while fee-paid schemes add a payment that recognises the carer's skills. Rates differ by nation and service. Your terms can change as your experience and circumstances do.

Across the UK

England

GOV.UK lists long-term, short-term, family and friends (kinship), emergency, respite and short breaks, remand, parent and child, fostering for adoption and specialist therapeutic care. The usual fostering limit comes from Schedule 7 of the Children Act 1989, connected persons get temporary approval under regulation 24 of the care planning regulations, and Staying Put has been in law since 2014.

Scotland

The Scottish Government describes short-term (usually under 12 months, including short breaks), emergency, interim (under two years), longer-term (over two years) and permanent fostering under a permanence order. Kinship carers of looked after children, and some carers under a Section 11 order, are eligible for the Scottish Recommended Allowance introduced in August 2023, at least the local foster carer rate. Continuing Care lets a young person leaving care from 16 stay with their former carer.

Wales

Foster Wales describes short-term, long-term, short breaks, parent and child, therapeutic, young refugee and supported lodgings roles, and says specialist types need a specific type of approval. The usual fostering limit applies in Wales too, and When I Am Ready, in law since 2016, lets a young person stay with a foster carer up to 21.

Northern Ireland

Fostering is arranged through Health and Social Care trusts. nidirect lists emergency, short-term, short breaks, long-term, kinship, specialist therapeutic and fee-paid fostering. Kinship carers can later apply through panel to become non-kin carers, Going the Extra Mile supports young people from 18 to 21 with their existing carers, and supported lodgings (STAY) covers 16 to 21 year olds.

Common questions