When children cannot live with their birth families, they need safe, supportive homes. Fostering and adoption are two important ways of providing this, but they are not the same. Understanding the differences will help you decide which might be right for you.
Who Has Parental Responsibility
- Fostering: The local authority (and sometimes the birth parents) usually keep parental responsibility. As a foster carer, you look after the child day to day, but bigger decisions are made by the authority or parents.
- Adoption: Adoptive parents take on full legal responsibility. Once an adoption order is made, you become the child’s permanent parent in every sense.
How Long the Child Stays
- Fostering: Placements can be short or long term. Some last only a few days, others until the child reaches adulthood. Many children return to their birth family if it becomes possible.
- Adoption: This is lifelong. Adoption means the child becomes a permanent member of your family.
Contact with Birth Family
- Fostering: Children in foster care often keep regular contact with their birth families, if it is safe. You would help support this.
- Adoption: Contact is usually much more limited, and in most cases the child’s main family becomes their adoptive one.
Financial Support
- Fostering: Foster carers receive a weekly allowance to cover costs of caring for the child, such as food, clothing, and activities.
- Adoption: Adoptive families do not receive ongoing allowances in the same way. Financial support may be available in some cases, especially where a child has additional needs.
Your Role
- Foster carers are part of a team that includes social workers, schools, and health professionals. Your role is to provide stability and care, while helping prepare the child for the future.
- Adoptive parents are not part of a care team. You raise the child as your own, with all the rights and responsibilities that brings.
Which Path Is Right for You?
Fostering suits people who want to support children for varying lengths of time and are happy to work closely with professionals. Adoption is for those who want to become a child’s permanent family.
Both fostering and adoption change lives for the better. The right choice depends on what kind of care you feel able to offer.
If you are interested in finding more about fostering, please get in touch.