Foster Care vs Foster Adoption

Children are placed in adoptive homes if efforts to reunify them with their birth families are unsuccessful. Children whose parental rights have been legally terminated may be adopted by relatives, a foster family, or an adoptive family.


Children are placed in foster homes because they have been removed from their own families due to abuse, neglect, or other family problems that endanger their safety. The children may range from infancy through 21 years of age, and may have special medical, physical, or emotional needs. The children may belong to any ethnicity or race and be a part of a group of brothers and sisters who need to be placed together.


Foster Parents:

  • provide daily care and nurturing of children in foster care;
  • advocate for children in their schools and communities.
  • inform the children's caseworkers about adjustments to the home, school, and community, as well as any problems that may arise, including any serious illnesses, accidents, or serious occurrences involving the foster children or their own families.
  • make efforts as team members with children's caseworkers towards reunifying children with their birth families.
  • provide a positive role model to birth families, and
  • help children learn life skills.

Adoptive Parents:

  • provide permanent homes and a lifelong commitment to children into adulthood.
  • provide for the short-term and long-term needs of children.
  • provide for children's emotional, mental, physical, social, educational, and cultural needs, according to each child's developmental age and growth.
  • may become certified as a foster family and accept children who are not legally free for adoption, but whose permanency plan is adoption.

Return to Step 2


The information on this page is used with the permission of the Child Welfare Information Gateway. http://www.childwelfare.gov