All children in foster care are unique. There are numerous types of foster care. Some may be more suitable for you and your family than others. In this blog, we’ll help you understand what kind of foster care is right for you.
It can take time for their birth families to work on making things safer for them to come home. While this happens, foster carers may take on the responsibility of looking after the child(ren).
Emergency placements
When some children come into care, they’ll need a safe place to live while the Department of Child Safety investigates and assesses their home life with their parents. This intensive work can occur over a period of days, weeks and sometimes months.
During this period, they may be placed with emergency carers. During this time, the Department of Child Safety will also try to investigate whether the child(ren) have any other family members who could safely care for them, if they’re unable to return home.
Often, when children are first removed from their parents and placed into an emergency placement, we don’t have a lot of information to provide carers about them. These carers need to be prepared to deal with some levels of uncertainty and patience to spend the time getting to know the children who have been placed with them. This can include their behaviours, triggers and how to best support them through such a big change in their lives.
Primary care placements
Sometimes the biological parents of children in care need a bit more time to achieve reunification. So, some children will need a placement for one to two years. The role of a primary foster carer is to support the child(ren) during this time so they can have a safe and stable place to call home. There is never a set timeframe for how long these placements will last. It all depends on whether the biological parents and Department of Child Safey are satisfied that the child can safely return home.
There will be some instances where a child might require a placement for a longer period of time, sometimes until they turn 21. This is called a long-term placement, and it’s only considered after all efforts that have been made to support parents to have their children returned have been unsuccessful. Parents are given two to three years to address the child protection concerns. It’s only once this has been unsuccessful that a longer-term order is sought.
This means that foster carers who are open to long-term placements must still be supportive of reunification in the early years of a placement, but also able to support children until they are 21 if this doesn’t work out and a long-term order is granted.
Even when a child has been granted a long-term order, it’s still important that they maintain a connection to their wider biological family. This is what makes long-term care different to adoption. These types of foster carers must be willing to support their children to have an ongoing connection to their families.
Respite placements
This type of placement is ideal for carers who lead busy lives and don’t want to commit to full-time caring. Respite care provides a break for carers who have primary placements, and can occur on a regular, planned or emergency basis.
Respite carers may look after foster children over the weekend, a few days a month, during the school holidays, when the primary carer is unwell or has a family emergency, or when the primary carer needs to go on holiday.
Read Alan’s story about his experience with respite care. 
So, how do you know what will work for you?
When starting out with your application, we’ll talk to you about what type of care might be best for you.
Some people like to start as respite carers. Then, at any stage they might become more open to providing primary care. However, it all depends on their capacity. We work with carers to to make sure that fostering is right for their lifestyle.
Your foster care agreement will outline the different types of placements that you’re available for. This is all part of the placement matching process. When matching you we’ll also consider the following factors:
- your circumstances
- placement preferences
- location
- cultural background
- the age of any children already living in your home
- the needs of the child(ren) you’ll be caring for.
Read Julie’s story about her foster care journey.
For more information on foster care, including inspiring foster carer stories, download our Foster Care Information Kit.