Types of fostering

Short-term foster placements can range from an overnight stay up to two years. Short-term carers offer children a stable and secure home while decisions are made about the child’s future.

Children may return home to their birth family, be cared for by other family members or carers, or move on to an adoptive family.

Long-term foster carers care for children unable to live with their birth families. Children stay with their long-term carers until they reach adulthood.

Help a family at crisis point or a foster carer who needs a break by taking care of a child or young person for a short period of time. This is mainly weekends, school holidays and in emergencies.

Short break carers offer children with disabilities regular, planned and ongoing support at weekends and during school holidays. These carers work closely with parents to ensure children receive care that meets their specific needs.

We need carers who can care for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and young people. Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children or UASC are children who have fled their country of origin without the care and protection of their parents. They are forced to leave their family and country behind to seek protection from violence, persecution, war, detention, climate change, terrorism or the disappearance of family. Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children take long and dangerous journeys alone, or are trafficked in circumstances unknown to them. We need carers who can provide these young people with a safe home and support when they settle in their new life including education and the local community in Sutton.

Parent and child fostering is a specialist type of fostering where typically a young mother or father,  or sometimes both parents together, come to stay with you with the aim of learning from your own parenting experience in a way that they themselves may  not have experienced when they were children. Typically a young parent and child, usually a baby, but sometimes during pregnancy. Your role will be quite different from a fostering a child or young person, because you will be guiding and supporting a young parent to do things for themselves and their child until  they can safely care for their baby on their own. As a "parenting mentor" you will not care for the child directly, but will provide a secure, safe and supportive home environment  whilst teaching the parent and sharing your observations about their progress with social workers.&nbs