Foster carers will provide a high quality care for children, the local authority has to look after all children that are under foster care, therefore, they work in partnership with local authorities to provide the services. They work with other professionals that include the therapists, doctors, teachers, etc to help children deal with emotional trauma, disabilities affecting the children in learning or during physical activities.
A wide range of people are needed in order to meet the needs of children and young people faced with different needs. They are often sought to reflect and be in a position to understand the heritage of a child, ethnicity, culture and language and origin, and thus, foster agency will need them from different backgrounds.
People need not to be married in order to become foster carer, one is not considered a foster care based on gender, marital status, among others. No age limit exists for fostering, on the other hand, fostering service providers expect them to be mature in order to deal with the complex needs faced by children that need fostering. Their recruitment takes place through public campaigns, advertisement made on radio, newspapers, etc.
Emergency foster care is a type of foster care that the children need somewhere safe to stay for a specified number of nights. Short-term foster care has them look for children for a number of weeks or months, during this time, plans will be underway for the future of the children. Short-breaks are foster cares for disabled children, have behavioural problems, or children that need special needs. The children will enjoy a short stay that is pre-planned while having a regular basis with new family members, this includes their parents, and here they will have a short break for themselves.
Remand fostering is foster care where young people get remanded by the court to the care of a trained foster carer. Other regions do not use remand fostering because they attend to the understanding of the children rather than going through the courts. Hearing of the child cases might end up sending a person to a secure unit, currently there are some schemes that look at developing foster care as an alternative to secure accommodation for children.
Permanent ones are for children that cannot return to their families and have made a decision to be adopted, this is meant for older children or children that are frequently in contact with their relatives. The children will eventually live with long-term ones until they mature and are ready to live an independent life.
Connected person type of foster carer or family and friends are foster care where children are looked after by the local authorities, they look after people that are already known. This is beneficial to children, and this is called connected persons, kinship fostering or even family and friends. Children that are not looked after by the local authority can live with either their uncles, aunts, sisters, grandparents, among others, they do not have an outside involvement.
There is the private fostering care that allows parents to make arrangements for a child to stay with a person that does not have close relation with the child, the person has no parental responsibilities. The child will stay with the private foster carer for a period exceeding 27 days, this can be a private arrangement that has special rules on the manner in which the child will be looked after. The local authority will be informed of the arrangements then they will visit to check on the welfare of the child.