Types of fostering

A short break carer provides respite to other carers for holiday periods and/or weekends. Alternatively, you and your children can have respite for holiday periods and/or weekends provided by a short break carer.

To be a short break carer, you would often need to be available for a week or two at a time. This is particularly important during school holidays, alongside regular weekends.

You can care for a child while their future living arrangements are planned. This can range from a few days to several months or years.

A child in short term care needs an understanding and loving environment to support them through this period of uncertainty.

Foster placements often begin as short term.

After short term care, you will either:

• support a child as they prepare to return to their birth family or move to a new foster or adoptive family
• decide, with your Social Worker, that you are able to offer permanent foster care yourself.

You can foster children who are unable to return to their birth family.

A permanent foster carer can offer a consistent, reliable and loving family environment that the child knows they can depend upon.

Permanent care can continue through to adulthood. Many children who have been permanently fostered remain a part of their carer’s family for life.

Parent and child fostering is being able to offer a home for the parent and their child. Some young parents and their very young children benefit from living with a foster family together for a short period of time.

This type of arrangement can be complex and challenging but also brings it’s rewards.

Do you have the life skills, experience and desire to open your home to a parent and their child to help support and encourage them to develop their skills to parent their child?

You would need to have space, time, discretion, confidence, sensitivity and to be assertive.

Welcoming a young teenager into your home means becoming their role model and guide. You will help them navigate their teenage years through to their independence.

The Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) states that children under the age of 18 are unable to stay in police custody overnight if they have been arrested.

These children need support from foster carers to:

• collect them from police custody
• take responsibility for their care overnight
• transport them in the morning to the necessary court, social care office or police station.

LINK foster carers provide overnight stays and day care in their own home for disabled children and young people.

The children have varying levels of need due to their learning, sensory or physical disability.

The care provided will be planned with the child’s family and could range from a few hours a month, to overnight care or a weekend.

These arrangements will often continue for many years and LINK foster carers become very much part of the child’s extended family.

Suffolk County Council is proud to accept Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASC) who arrive spontaneously into Suffolk and from other regions of the country under the government National Transfer Scheme (NTS).

We want to ensure we have foster homes ready to support these children and young people.

Read more about fostering UASC here:

Suffolk’s Staying Put scheme supports carers to care for their fostered child beyond the age of 18.

The scheme offers support to carers through further education and training. This helps smooth the transition towards full independence.

Connected Persons (Kinship) fostering is when someone cares for a specific child if they are a family member, friend or have a connection to the family.

These people can be considered as a potential Connected Persons carer for a Suffolk child in care if they live in the UK.