Emergency foster care is a temporary solution for children and teens who enter care until a relative or long-term fostering family can be identified. These emergency or short-term foster families serve as a link for children between entering care and finding a permanent home.
Rebecca works on the Upstate Placement Team, and she is here today on #FosterFridayLive to tell us about the process of putting children in emergency homes. When a kid enters care in one of the ten counties that Rebecca manages, she and her colleagues contact the family. After gathering information about the kid or children who have entered care, the team contacts foster families on the open bed list to determine if they would accept the child's placement.
What exactly is long-term child fostering?
When we reach the end of the day or close to the end of the day and are unable to secure a long-term placement for a child, we will begin calling our short-term fostering families to see if they are interested in an overnight order. We may have a family available for the child, but they may be unable to accept placement for a few days. Thus we require a short-term placement for the child. So that's the emergency—a child at risk of spending the night in the office.
If you have a long-term family, you are one colour, and if you have a short-term family, you are another. We begin looking at our short-term families for an acceptable placement for that child once we have exhausted all of our long-term alternatives for that day. A family can be both long-term and short-term, colour-coded accordingly y. (For example, grey indicates closed; green indicates you go or open for the long term; and orange means short-term, emergency, or respite.) Or a green/orange mix.) The call is made in the same manner by the same people. We contact our private agencies' peers, who have rules for managing their families.
There is a great need for families that can accommodate large sibling groups. When a large sibling group enters a home, the thing that needs to be in the right direction, i.e. foster carer role and responsibilities, placing them together for one night before splitting up, is a fantastic thing for them. So we may work a little longer on youngsters in large sibling groupings to see if we can keep some of them together rather than placing them one at a time—even if it's just for an overnight.
More families who will accept all types of placements are needed. The goal is for every child to have a safe place to sleep and, ideally, a place to call home for as long as they require it. If you'd like to learn more about becoming a foster parent, don't hesitate to contact UK Fostering; UKF will connect you to the resources you need.
Source : long-term fostering
