What kinds of children are fostered?
The children who are placed with foster carers come from many social, ethnic and religious backgrounds. Although we do place younger children, the majority of the young people that carers will work with will be teenagers. They may have experienced a variety of problems in their life. Many will be deeply upset about being away from their families and may present challenges to care for when they first come in to foster care. However, this does not mean that all children in foster care are ‘problem children’ and many, given sufficient time to settle, are likely to be no more ‘difficult’ than any other child. Some of the children placed with foster carers, because of their history, will have more issues than most and will offer a considerable challenge to their foster carers. This does not mean that they should not be placed with foster carers as this may still be seen as being in their best interests. In some cases children will be identified as needing a specialist fostering placement wh
