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Foster Care...
Helping put the pieces back together!
- Foster care is about caring for someone elses child in your own home
- Foster carers work as part of a Team: working with the child's family and social workers to help children return to their families.
- Fostering isn't something you can do in isolation. It affects your family and friends. Your children will have to share their home, and you.
- There are different kinds of fostering including: respite care, short-term, medium-term and occasionally long-term foster care.
Can you see yourself fostering?
Have you enough room in your home and enough space in your life, to care for another child?
Carers need to consider how their family culture might differ from that of a child they are looking after and not devalue what a foster child is used to.
Coming to live in your home is a big change for a child. You will need patience and understanding to help a child cope with this big change.
There are rewards!
- You will be making a difference to a child's life
- You will be helping to keep families together
- You will be developing your own skills and enriching your own life
Help is available
- Your own social worker and the child's social worker will visit regularly
- Training and support groups are organised
- There is financial assistance
Finding Out More
Becoming a foster carer is a big step for you and your family. It is not to be taken lightly, and we will need to be sure that you are prepared to take this step. The preparation and assessment process can be quite long and will require a social worker to make visits to your home and talk to you and your family.
If you want to hear some more, without committing yourself, contact:
The Family Placement Team
Community Services Department
Telephone Omagh: 028 8225 5033
or Enniskillen: 028 6638 4000
If you are thinking of fostering a child, you can get additional information here (PDF 280K).