What is Adoption?

Adoption is a legal process which permanently gives parental rights to adoptive parents. Adoption means taking a child into your home as a permanent family member. It means caring for and guiding children through their growing years and giving them the love and understanding they need to develop their full potential. Adoption is permanent and has significant legal, emotional, psychological and social consequences for everyone involved: it is a life-changing moment and cause for both celebration and sadness.

What is Fostering?

Fostering differs from adoption, in that an adoption order ends a child’s legal relationship with their natural family, whereas looked after children remain the legal responsibility of the local authority and/or their birth parents.

Fostering is a way of providing a stable family life for children and young people, who are unable to live with their parents at a point in time. This allows children the chance to thrive in a safe, secure, loving and caring home environment with foster carers. The children and young people placed with foster carers are from a diverse range of backgrounds and will display different behaviour depending upon their various experiences.

This is Difference between Adoption and Fostering