Foster Families

Foster families are all different, from single carers to families with lots of children.  Your social worker will have worked hard with the Family Placement Team to try and find the best family to suit what you want or need.  Unfortunately there are not always lots of foster placements available, but every effort will always be made to make sure that your foster family is as appropriate as possible for you.

Some foster carers are paid for looking after children; all get an allowance to help cover the costs of looking after young people and children.  However it is important to remember that all foster carers do it because they like looking after children and young people.  Foster carers are also supported by social workers from the “family placement team”.  They are known as “supervising social workers”, although you may still hear them referred to by their old name of “link workers”.  It is their job to support and advise foster carers to help make sure that they are meeting the needs of the young people they care for.

Some foster carers are “short term carers” which means that you are only expected to stay there for a short while.  Others are “respite carers” which means they look after children for short breaks, maybe at weekends.  Some carers look after young people when they are “remanded”, that is, they are in the middle of being seen at court because of an offence that they may have committed.

In Hertfordshire there is also a policy that children should be given somewhere to live where the carer or carers are from the same religion or race as the child.  If this is not possible, the carers have an important duty to make sure that the child or young person is helped to remain in contact with other people and traditions from their background.