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W hen is fostering not fostering? When it is respite fostering also known as support care. The essence of support care is that children go to a trained carer for short, regular periods to give them and their family a chance to relax and unwind away from each other.

The great strength of respite fostering is that it keeps together families who are struggling to cope. It gives parents and children regular time away from each other and offers non-judgemental support while they work out strategies for dealing with their problems. Proponents argue that, in many cases, many of these children would otherwise end up in local authority care or be repeatedly accommodated - damaging family relationships and children's self-esteem further.

This type of fostering doesn't involve a child being taken into care. The family home remains the child's base and parents retain responsibility for their children, making the decisions about their care, discipline and education. They are equal partners in the support fostering arrangements, which are planned, contractual, time-limited agreements, usually lasting between six and nine months. The detail of the arrangements - perhaps for a child to stay an evening or overnight once a week, or for one weekend a month - are set up jointly in discussion between the parent, the child, the support carer and a social worker.

Because children are only with their carers for short periods, and are there mainly to relax, no one expects them to develop "deep and meaningful" relationships with their carers - although many do form lasting bonds. As a result, it is possible to place children with foster carers who may be very different from their own family, or come from different racial backgrounds. This can broaden children's horizons, and be a positive advantage for children who are struggling with their identity (see A Sense of Identity, below).

There are several advantages to the schemes that are already set up in the UK. First, they reduce the number of children going into local authority care. In Bradford, of the 100 respite foster placements a year, just five or six children need to go into care, and many other schemes report similar results.

Second, it provides local authorities with a way to hang on to experienced foster carers who want to move away from full-time fostering, for whom respite fostering can be an appealing alternative. The short-term, flexible nature of support fostering also opens up a large number of potential recruits who would never consider fostering full time but would like to do it on a smaller scale. However, Sue Smith, co-ordinator of the Birmingham Neighbourhood Care Scheme warns that there can be pressure from mainstream fostering services. "They call at 4pm on a Friday asking to borrow one of your support carers for the weekend - and 18 months later they're still borrowing them! You have to be very strong and say no," she says.

Third, support care gets around the stigma often attached to social services' involvement and can help parents get in touch with non-statutory support services. In Birmingham, support carers are local childminders, so no one bats an eyelid when they collect someone else's child from school. Childminders are in touch with local parent and toddler groups and other support networks and can introduce parents to these without arousing curiosity - important when a common factor of families in difficulty is their social isolation.

The supportive and non-judgemental ethos of support care schemes is what is most valued by parents. However, Smith says it is important for families to know that a carer's first responsibility is to the child, and that any child protection concerns will be passed on to social services. "As long as that's explained at the beginning, it's usually accepted and understood," she says.

Given that it is now widely recognised that children fare better with their own families than in care, proponents of the scheme argue that support care should be the first port of call for most families in difficulty. More than 100 local authorities have expressed an interest in setting up similar schemes, but as yet there are only 16 support fostering projects up and running across the whole of the UK. As Smith says: "The entire budget for Birmingham's Neighbourhood Care Scheme is less than the cost of a year's external placement for one child. Given that, can you afford not to have one?" 


- For further information on support care, please contact Ena Fry at the Fostering Network on 020 7620 6400 or e-mail info@fostering.net

A sense of identity

Danika,12, is of dual heritage, brought up by her white grandparents. She has only ever heard negative comments about her father, who is black and was rejected by her white mother. When she was referred for some weekend care due to her grandparents' infirmity, Danika didn't think of herself as black, only as not fitting in. She formed a good relationship with her support carer, an older black woman, who became an important source in helping her to recover a sense of her identity as a young black person.

Using support care

Joanne Bell's son, Craig, was 10 when she first asked social services in Bradford for help.  "I waited until I was at absolute rock bottom before I went to social services. In fact, I'd gone way past rock bottom. I actually threatened to kill him if they didn't help.  

"The first thing I was offered was an outreach worker, which didn't work at all. Then someone told me about support care. I wanted to know what it was, so we met the carers in their home. It was like popping round to a friend's for a cup of tea. We just sat talking, not about negative things but about normal things.  

"The carer had an older son, so Craig was able to make a friend. He went every Wednesday night, stayed the night, went to school the next day, and came back on Thursday evening. He didn't see it as a punishment - he looked forward to it, and I looked forward to it. It meant that, when we were fighting, instead of it snowballing, we knew we just had to hold on until Wednesday when we would both get a break. Then by Thursday we had both calmed down, and were looking forward to seeing each other again. 

"There's no stigma. It's like a friend you can ask for advice, someone who has been through the same sorts of things. When you ask a social worker for advice it comes across the wrong way, like they're telling you what to do, but with the support carer you tell them that he's been bunking off school again, and they say 'well, we tried this'. 

"The carer's rules are the same as mine - so if he is suspended from school he goes to bed early or he can't use the Playstation. It means I'm not the bad woman, because someone else has the same rules as me. 

"You know that the day is coming when it's going to stop. You look forward to it, and you dread it too. My son still calls the carer and chats to her sometimes. And it's given me strength and a boost, too. We still have terrible times, but I'm not going to be frightened by it. I've come out of it more confident and more able to deal with things. As a project, I think it's out of this world."