Foster Care

If you are interested in fostering, please contact us using the details below. Recruitment courses are held in the Spring and Autumn of each year.

You can view or download our information pack and registration of interest form from this page.

Clackmannanshire Council is committed to ensuring that every child has the right to family based care if they can no longer live in their own families.

Families cannot manage to provide adequate care for their children for many reasons. The Council aims to keep brothers and sisters together whenever possible, and to enable children to maintain close links with their local community, so we want to recruit carers who can provide that resource. Follow this link if you are interested in being a foster carer.

Children being looked after by the authority and their families have a wide range of different needs, and we need families who can carry out a range of tasks to help and support them.

Each Local Authority uses different names to describe a variety of fostering tasks. Here are some of the different types of care Clackmannanshire Council provides:

Types of Foster Care

Short Term Foster Care
Short term Foster Carers look after children or young people on a short-term basis. This can mean a few days, weeks, months, or may extend longer. Placements are made in an attempt to ensure children's needs are matched with the care a particular family can offer. However, in a crisis a child can arrive at short notice with little information known about them. In most cases it is hoped that the children will return to their own families. Temporary Foster Carers have several tasks.
- The children may be confused and upset and foster carers will need to help them through a difficult time.
- Foster Carers need to work with the social worker to help the child return home. This often involves a lot of contact with the child's family and visits may take place in the foster home.
- If the child is unable to return to their own family, foster carers will need to help the child move on to a permanent placement. This may be with a permanent foster carers, an adoptive family or a residential home.
A child can be placed with carers with parental agreement, or through the Children's Hearing system, often without parental agreement.
Permanent or Long-Term Foster Care
Permanent foster carers care for children who are unable to return to their own families. It is a long-term commitment, providing stability and security to a child who may have had a very unsettled early life.
Although the children live with their foster family throughout their childhood, it is usually hoped that links with their families will be maintained.
Unlike adoptive parents, permanent foster carers do not have legal parental responsibility for the child. However, it is likely that the local authority will have secured the child's long-term future by applying for a parental responsibilities order from the court.
Caring for Teenagers
Some foster carers are specifically approved to look after older children and teenagers. Because of difficult past experiences the young people may at times display troublesome and anti-social behaviour. They may have problems at school and may get into trouble in the community. Often they will have confused family relationships and may have experienced several losses and moves.
Foster Carers need to provide consistent care and support and try to help the youngsters make sense of their situation.
Most young people will still have active links with their own families and may at some time return to their care. For some young people this is not an option. Foster carers will then need to provide help and support to enable the young person to make the transition to independent living.
Respite Foster Care or Short Breaks
Foster care is usually provided on a full-time basis. However there may be occasions when children need to be accommodated on a part-time or occasional basis.
Foster carers offering short breaks have children to stay overnight, for a weekend or for a longer holiday period. This gives the parents or full-time carers a break and also provides the young person with valuable experience outwith their usual home environment.