How is Adoption Different from Fostering?

If your birth parents cannot look after you, you are probably living with a foster family until an adoptive family can be found for you.

Foster families usually look after chidlren until they can move back home or move to a new adoptive family. Sometimes, an arrangement is made for a foster family to look after a child until he or she is grown up, and sometimes a foster family will arrange to adopt their foster child.

However, foster families do not usually look after children until they have grown up. But they sometimes keep in touch with their foster children, even when they move on to new families.