Create belonging
Offer consistent routines, patience and a home where a child can be themselves.
Understanding foster care
A safe home can change the direction of a life.
Fostering gives a child or young person a stable, caring family home when they cannot live with their birth family. It may last for a night, a few months or through to adulthood.
Based in ManchesterHere when you’re ready.
One childat the centre of every decision
Many pathsfrom emergency to long-term care
One teamworking around every foster family
What foster care means
Safety, stability and room to grow.
Children come into care for many different reasons. Whatever has happened before, fostering offers the everyday security of a home, reliable adults and routines a child can begin to trust.
A foster carer provides day-to-day care while working with the child’s local authority, social workers, school, health professionals and, where appropriate, birth family. The child’s care plan guides how long the arrangement lasts and what support is needed.
The fostering role
Care is practical, emotional and professional.
There is no single “typical” day, but the foundations remain the same.
Champion progress
Celebrate small wins, support education and help a young person discover their strengths.
Work as a team
Share information and make thoughtful decisions with the professionals around the child.
Keep developing
Use supervision and training to understand trauma, behaviour and therapeutic care.
Who can foster?
Families come in every form.
Organic Fostering welcomes applicants from different cultures, faiths, ethnicities, sexual orientations, relationship statuses and life experiences. You do not need to own your home or already have children.
The practical starting points are that you are over 21, have the legal right to live and work in the UK, and have a spare bedroom available for a child. More important still are patience, resilience, warmth and the willingness to learn.
Fostering and adoption
Different legal relationships, the same need for love.
Adoption permanently transfers legal parental responsibility to the adoptive parent. In foster care, legal responsibility remains with the local authority and birth parents, even when a child stays with the same foster family for many years.
Foster carers therefore work within an agreed care plan and may share some decisions with the child’s social worker. They also receive an allowance and professional fee while a child is in placement.
Take the first step
Could fostering be part of your story?
Ask your questions in a relaxed, confidential conversation with our Manchester team.