Foster Care & Related Child Welfare Forms - Foster Care

Is Foster Care Right for You? Foster Care Information

What is Foster Care? Foster Care Laws

Foster care programs are run by individual states in order to help place children in a healthy and stable environment until they have a healthy permanent home available. In some cases, a parent has lost or volunteered to relinquish custody of a child temporarily, and the goal of foster care is to provide a stable home while the biological parent makes necessary changes to their lives that will allow them to bring their child back into their home. Sometimes a child's parents are deceased or have been declared permanently incompetent. These children may be available for adoption, but are often hard to place permanently because they are older or may have behavior or developmental issues. Foster care allows these children to be cared for without asking caregivers to make a permanent commitment without getting to know the child.

Who Needs a Foster Parent? Foster Parent

For a wide variety of reasons, there are many children who are in need of care from a foster home. Some children are placed in foster care while their parents are in jail or treatment. Some have faced abuse and their parent needs to prove that they can provide a safe home for the child before they regain custody. In these cases, children often maintain a relationship with their parents through visitation.

Orphans, children without a living parent, will also frequently enter the foster care system, especially if they are older. Many prospective adoptive parents express a preference for an infant, and there are many older children who need homes. Some also have siblings that will preferably go to a single foster home in order to stay together. At times, foster homes are difficult to find and these foster kids end up spending time in orphanages before finding a place with a family.

Do You Have What It Takes? Foster Care Application

Opening your home to foster kids is something that needs to be considered very carefully. Foster parenting is not for everyone. While it is important to love children, it takes far more than this in order to qualify to become a foster parent. While many find the experience of being a foster parent very rewarding, others express extreme frustration.

Foster care is closely monitored by Child Protective Services in the county where you live, and potential foster families need to undergo a screening process by child welfare before qualifying to take in foster kids. They also have to agree to the county's discipline policies which include, among other things, that no corporal punishment will be used with a child.

Once you are approved, it is important to understand that caring for foster children can be very challenging, and will require a lot of patience.

What Happens Once You Qualify? What Is Foster Care

Once it has been determined that you are a good candidate for foster parenting, your county's child welfare department will place a foster child or foster children in your care. In order to help with the cost of caring for the child or children, you will receive a subsidy to help with expenses. While uninformed persons may think some foster parents are "in it for the money", this is not the case. Often the costs associated with caring for foster children are only partially covered by the stipend.

When Foster Care Leads to Adoption Becoming A Foster Parent

For some foster parents the experience of caring for foster children works especially well, and ultimately leads to foster care adoption. Most foster care agencies have a goal to reunite children with biological families. Foster care statistics indicate that reunification is the goal over half of the time. However, there are many times when, despite these efforts, it is apparent the child needs a permanent home. Foster parents often develop a bond with the children they care for and will want to adopt them. In one case, a woman was a foster parent for an infant whose mother has a drug problem. The mother was given the opportunity to prove her ability to care for the child, but she did not do what was required. The result was a foster care adoption.