Long-Term Fostering: What It Really Means to Be Someone’s Family

Some children stay with a foster family for a weekend. Others stay until they are grown, and then come back at Christmas with a bag of washing. Long-term fostering is the second kind. This is what it involves, and what it does not.

Please note: this is general information, not personal, legal or tax advice. Rules and figures are correct at 6 August 2026. A child’s legal status and care plan are decisions for their local authority. You can check the current tax position for foster carers on GOV.UK.

What is long-term fostering?

It is a plan, agreed in advance, for a child to stay with one family until they are grown.

The law is specific about it. Under the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010, a long-term foster placement is one where the child’s plan for permanence is foster care, where you have agreed to look after them until they stop being looked after, and where the local authority has confirmed that arrangement to you, to the birth parents and to the child.

That last part is the bit that gets missed. Plenty of placements run for years without ever being confirmed as long-term. The confirmed version is what tells a child they can stop packing.

Is it the same as adoption?

No.

Adoption moves parental responsibility to you permanently. Long-term fostering does not. In practice that means:

• the child stays looked after by the local authority
• parental responsibility does not pass to you, it stays with the birth parents and is shared with the local authority where there is a care order
• the child keeps their own surname
• family time with birth relatives normally carries on
• you still have a supervising social worker, still keep daily records, still attend reviews
• you are still paid a fostering fee and allowance for as long as the child is placed with you

That list can read like a set of restrictions. None of it stops a child treating your house as home.

So how permanent is permanent?

Honest answer: there is no guarantee. A care plan can change. A court can change it. A child can decide at fifteen that they want something different.

What long-term fostering sets out to be is the last move.

On 31 March 2025 there were 81,770 children looked after in England, and 54,820 of them, 67 per cent, were living with foster carers. One in ten children in care had three or more placements during that year. Every one of those moves is a new bedroom, a new school gate, a new set of adults learning how you take your tea.

How does a placement become long-term?

Usually like this:

• the child’s care plan sets permanence through foster care as the aim
• the local authority looks for a match, or recognises one that already exists
• the plan is agreed at the child’s looked after review, with the Independent Reviewing Officer
• the arrangement is confirmed in writing to everyone involved

Sometimes the child is already living with you and the plan catches up with reality. More often it starts as a match on paper, followed by introductions: an afternoon visit, then a weekend, then a moving day with bin bags you promise yourself you will replace with a proper suitcase.

What changes day to day?

Less than people imagine.

The visits ease off. Once a child has been in a long-term foster placement for at least a year, and if the child agrees, their social worker can visit every six months rather than every few weeks. The looked after review still happens at least twice a year.

What fills the gap is ordinary life. School uniform ordered in July for September. The same dentist for six years running. A coat on the same peg by the front door. A bike outgrown and passed down.

One practical thing to get right early: delegated authority. This is the written agreement about what you can decide yourself, from haircuts and sleepovers to school trips and holidays abroad. Ask for it to be spelled out in the placement plan on day one. A child should not be waiting three weeks for a signature to go to a birthday party.

Does the child still see their birth family?

Usually, yes.

This is the part that puts people off before they start, and the part experienced carers most often say they were wrong about. A child who is settled with you does not love you less because they still see their mum on a Tuesday. Their history is not a competitor.

You can read more in our piece on maintaining family ties in foster care.

What happens when they turn 18?

They do not have to leave.

Staying Put lets a young person carry on living with their former foster carer after their eighteenth birthday, up to the age of 21. The duty on local authorities to support it comes from section 23CZA of the Children Act 1989, added by the Children and Families Act 2014. To be eligible the young person must have been in care for at least 13 weeks since turning 14, and still be in care at 18.

The paperwork changes. You become a Staying Put carer, they become a care leaver, and the allowance works differently because they contribute towards their keep.

The person in the spare room does not change at all.

Is long-term fostering harder than short-term?

Different rather than harder.

The demanding part is not the school run or the packed lunches. It is that a child arrives with eight or twelve years of history you were not in, and some of that history hurts. They may test whether you will stay. That testing often arrives about six months in, once they have relaxed enough to risk it.

You are not there to erase what came before. You are there to be the adult who is still there afterwards.

Who we are looking for right now

Fostering Hearts needs long-term carers across Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Birmingham. We are particularly short of people who can offer a home to:

• children aged 8 and over
• brothers and sisters who should not be split up
• teenagers
• young people who want somewhere to stay into adulthood

You do not need to own your home. You do not need to be married or to have children of your own. No childcare qualification is required. What you need is a spare bedroom and the sort of steadiness that survives a bad Tuesday. You also need to be over 21.

From your first enquiry to panel, approval usually takes four to six months.

You will not be doing this on your own

A long commitment needs support that lasts as long as it does.

Our supervising social workers each support around six families, which is why they know your household rather than your file. We have a lead education consultant who tracks how the children in our care are doing at school, and who turns up to the meetings that count. We make a financial contribution towards our carers’ council tax. Our Youth Council has written questions that get asked at fostering panel, and the children we look after carry pocket-sized cards with contact details for raising a worry with someone outside the house.

Ofsted inspected us in November 2024 and called us a good agency with outstanding leadership and management. One carer told the inspectors: “My supervising social worker has been an absolute lifeline for me. I feel so much more confident in my role because of her.”

Frequently asked questions

Can I foster long-term if I work full time?

Often yes, though it depends on the child’s age and needs and on how flexible your hours are. A school-age child in a settled long-term placement is a different proposition from a toddler. We have written more about balancing a full-time job with foster care. Talk it through with us before you rule yourself out.

Will the child call me mum or dad?

Some do. Many use your first name. A few move between the two depending on who is listening. Follow the child’s lead and do not make it a test of how well things are going.

Do I get paid the same for long-term fostering?

Yes. The fee and allowance are paid per child for as long as the child is placed with you, so a long-term placement means steady income rather than gaps between placements. Fostering income is taxed under Qualifying Care Relief: for the 2026/27 tax year that is a fixed 20,440 pounds per household, plus 435 pounds a week for each child under 11 and 515 pounds a week for each child aged 11 or over, before any tax is due. There is more detail in our guide to foster carer allowance and pay.

What if it does not work out?

It sometimes does not. If a placement is under strain, the local authority and your agency will call a meeting to see what support would help before anyone talks about ending it. Asking for help early is what keeps placements going.