The different types of foster care explained

When people first ring us, most of them picture one thing: a child arriving with a bag, and staying. Fostering does look like that sometimes. It also looks like a fortnight while a family sorts itself out, a weekend a month, a young mother and her baby, or a young man of nineteen who has been with the same carer since he was twelve and is not going anywhere yet. Working out which of these you could realistically do is usually the thing that turns “I’ve wondered about fostering” into an actual application.

Why there is more than one kind

Every child in care has a plan, and the plan decides the kind of fostering they need. Some children need somewhere safe tonight while the courts and the local authority work out what happens next. Others already know they are not going home, and what they need is a family who will still be there when they are thirty. You will see these written up as different types of placement, though most carers simply call them different kinds of fostering.

The scale of it is worth knowing. At 31 March 2025 there were 81,770 children in care in England, and about two thirds of them were living with foster carers. On the same date there were 42,190 fostering households, down 1 per cent on the year before, and 69,825 approved fostering places, of which roughly 17 per cent were sitting empty. Empty places sound like good news. Usually they mean the carer is approved for an age group or a kind of fostering that does not match the children who need homes this week.

Emergency fostering

An emergency call comes with almost no notice. The police have removed a child overnight, or a family has broken down that afternoon, and someone needs a bed, a meal and a calm adult by nine o’clock. You might have the child for two nights or two weeks. There is rarely a full history to read first, which is the part carers find hardest, and it is why our out of hours line is answered by a person rather than a recording.

Emergency carers need to be flexible, quick to reassure, and comfortable with not knowing. If you work fixed hours, this one is difficult. If you are at home, or retired, or self-employed with some slack in your week, it can be the most useful thing you can offer.

Short-term fostering

Short-term fostering covers anything from a few weeks to a couple of years while decisions get made. The child might go home to their family, move to relatives, be adopted, or move on to a long-term foster family. Your job in the middle of that is to keep ordinary life going: school, meals, football on Saturday, family time with parents and with brothers and sisters, and a written record of how the child is actually doing that the court and the social workers will rely on.

Short-term and emergency fostering together make up around 60 per cent of what we do at South Coast, so if you are approved for it you will not be waiting long.

Long-term and permanent fostering

Long-term fostering is for children who will not be going home and are not going to be adopted, often older children and groups of brothers and sisters. It became a formal category in April 2015, when the care planning regulations were amended to give long-term fostering a statutory definition and to set out what has to be agreed before a child is matched to one. In practice that means everybody, including the child, has said out loud that this is meant to last.

It is a different job from short-term. There is less drama and more of the slow, unglamorous work of belonging: birthdays, GCSE results, the first driving lesson, the argument about the state of their bedroom. Around 40 per cent of our fostering is long-term or permanent.

Parent and child fostering

Here a parent moves in alongside their baby, usually while the family court decides whether they can care for the child themselves. The arrangement typically runs for around twelve weeks. You are not there to take over. You are there to show, to discuss, to do things alongside the parent, and eventually to stand back, while keeping a factual daily record that the court will read.

It is the most specialist thing on this list and the best paid, and it suits people who can be warm to an adult they may privately have doubts about. Not everyone can. That is a fair thing to know about yourself.

Fostering a baby

Babies come into care for all sorts of reasons, and often at a few days old. The practical point that surprises people is that you do not always need a spare bedroom for a baby: a child under two can sleep in a cot in your own room, and the Lullaby Trust recommends that babies share a room with their carer for at least the first six months anyway. We have written separately about whether you need a spare bedroom to foster. Beyond that, it is broken nights, health visitors, and a lot of hospital and family centre appointments in the diary.

Short breaks

Short breaks, which you may see called respite, mean a child comes to you regularly and predictably: one weekend a month, say, or a week in the school holidays. Sometimes it supports a family who are struggling, sometimes it gives another foster carer a rest so that a child’s main home holds together.

It is quietly growing. Ofsted counted 1,765 approved short break places in England at 31 March 2025, up 41 per cent since 2021, though that is still only 3 per cent of all mainstream fostering places. For people who work full time, or who are not ready to give up their whole week, it is often the sensible way in.

Enhanced fostering

Enhanced fostering is our name for caring for a child whose needs are higher than most: a young person coming out of a residential home, a child with significant additional needs, or one whose distress shows up in ways that frighten other adults off. It comes with more training, more visits from your supervising social worker, and more money. It is not a starting point. Most of our enhanced carers built up to it.

Staying Put

Staying Put is not really a type of fostering, it is what happens when fostering stops and the relationship does not. A young person who turns 18 while living with you can carry on living with you until they are 21. The Children and Families Act 2014 requires councils in England to facilitate, monitor and support these arrangements, and to be eligible the young person must have been in care for at least 13 weeks after turning 14.

Be aware that the money changes. The fostering allowance stops and a Staying Put allowance takes its place, usually a lower one, with the young person contributing rent and something towards the bills. You and they write a Living Together Agreement covering house rules, money and who does what. Carers who have done it tend to describe it as the least dramatic and most obviously worthwhile year of their fostering.

What each kind pays

Please note: the figures below are South Coast Fostering’s own weekly rates, checked against our foster carer pay and allowances page in August 2026. Tax treatment depends on your own circumstances. This is general information, not personal financial advice, and HMRC’s guidance on Qualifying Care Relief is the authoritative source.

Money is not why anyone starts, but it decides whether you can keep going, so here it is plainly. At South Coast you receive one weekly fee per child that combines the allowance for the child’s costs with your professional fee:

• £479.50 a week for a child aged 10 or under, of which about £90 is spent directly on the child
• £507.50 a week for a child aged 11 or over, of which about £100 is spent directly on the child
• £987 a week for parent and child fostering, with a possible deduction if the parent receives benefits
• Enhanced fostering usually adds £100 to £200 a week, and in rare, very high need cases can reach £1,600

Foster carers are self-employed and Qualifying Care Relief means most pay little or no tax on this income. There is more detail in our guide to how foster carer pay works in Southern England.

Which one is right for you?

Nobody expects you to know on the phone. A few honest questions help:

• Can you drop everything at short notice, or does your week need to be predictable?
• Do you want to be part of a child’s whole growing up, or would you rather help a family through a bad patch and hand back?
• Is there a spare room, and who else is in the house?
• How would you cope with a child leaving you, possibly with a fortnight’s notice?

There is no right answer, and plenty of our carers do two kinds at once. Most people start with short-term fostering or short breaks and move as they find out what they are good at. You do not need a partner to do any of it either, as we set out in our piece on whether single people can foster.

You will not have to do this alone

Whichever kind you choose, you get a named supervising social worker, a 24 hour line answered by someone who knows your household, preparation training before you are approved, and a group of local carers who have already had the week you are having. You can read more about the support we give our foster carers. We say it a lot around here: a child isn’t just given a home, they’re given a chance. Your job is to give the chance. Ours is to make sure you are not doing it on your own.

Frequently asked questions

Can I change the type of fostering I do?

Yes. Your approval sets an age range and a number of children, and it can be reviewed and changed as your experience and your circumstances change. Talk to your supervising social worker.

Do I have to choose one type before I apply?

No. Most people arrive with a rough idea and firm it up during preparation training and the assessment, once they have met carers doing each kind.

Can I foster more than one type at the same time?

Often, yes. A common combination is long-term fostering for one child plus short breaks for another, as long as it fits your approval and there is room.

Which type of fostering is most needed in Southern England?

Short-term and emergency carers, and carers for teenagers and for groups of brothers and sisters. Those are the requests we most often struggle to match.

Does the pay differ by type?

Yes. Parent and child fostering and enhanced fostering pay more, because they ask more. The age of the child also affects the weekly fee.