Foster Care Is The Formal And Informal Custodial Care Of Children

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Foster care is defined as “the formal and informal custodial care of children whose parents are outside their own biological family home when their parents are unable, unwilling, or prohibited from caring for them”. Informal foster care refers to an arrangement between birth parents and relatives to care for their child and generally unregistered, uncounted and unevaluated. Alternatively, formal foster care is legally authorized by a recognized authority. In general, foster parents are recruited after being assessed and they might have to attend training before they are qualified to foster a child in their own homes. The responsibilities of foster parents concerning the foster child are basically stated in a legal contract. Fostering itself also means “the undertaking by a family to look after someone else’s child for a few days, weeks, months, even sometimes many years, for an allowance or fee.” Accordingly, foster parents are paid with a certain amount of money in return of their job to care for the child and meet his or her needs for a certain period. Notably, foster care is characterized as a full-time care for twenty-four-hour a day outside the child’s own home. Basically, the main purpose of foster care in many countries is to provide substitute care for children who have been abandoned, abused and neglected so that they would have similar opportunities to live in the same way as the other ordinary children within a family setting. It is generally acknowledged

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