Specialist Fostering
Foster care can be necessary for children and young people for a range of reasons, but there are some foster placements that are the result of abuse and neglect.
Other children who are already in the foster care system and who have had traumatic experiences might have found it hard to fit in a number of foster families.
Where foster care continues to break down and the young person is left without a family who can look after them, a specialist foster carer might be called upon to offer a place. Children who have experienced abuse or neglect or who’s families have been devastated by a bereavement can present specific challenges to the people looking after them.
This means that the carer often needs as much support as the foster placement, and at Kindercare Northern Ireland we provide this through skilled professionals who work with our foster carers and their families.
At Kindercare NI, we carefully match the needs of foster placements to the skills and experiences of foster carers to avoid carers being overwhelmed. Specialist foster care is caring at its most challenging, but it is also caring at its most rewarding.
Children who have experienced abuse in their formative years or who have been abandoned by their biological parents are desperately in need of adults in their lives that they can trust.
To be able to offer a young person the type of stability, reliability and emotional security that they have lacked in their family home is a rare commodity.
However, the patience and care that you can put into a vulnerable young person will be rewarded by the knowledge that you will have made a significant difference to their life.