Family care

In addition to institutional substitute care, we provide preparatory training for family care as well as professional support for foster carers for the duration of a child's placement. Fifteen years of experience as a provider of child welfare substitute care, our established operations, and our knowledge of everyday life and social work in substitute care give foster carers a secure foundation for cooperation.

Family care in child welfare means placing a child or young person who has been taken into care, urgently placed, or placed as a support measure in non-institutional care, into the private home of a foster carer and as part of that family's life. Family care and foster carers are also referred to as foster families and foster parents. Family care takes many forms, and a foster parent may act as a couple or as a person living alone. Different cultural backgrounds, languages and life experiences are a valuable part of family care, and in a changing society many kinds of families are needed to respond to the individual needs of children and young people.

Family care is based on legislation (the Family Care Act (263/2015), the Child Welfare Act (417/2007)) and is defined as the primary form of substitute care. In practice this means that when a child is placed, the social worker first establishes whether substitute care could be provided within the child's own network of close relations, or secondarily in the form of a family acting as a foster family outside that network. In that case the foster family is in a commission relationship (not an employment relationship) with the wellbeing services county that placed the child. Regardless of the form of substitute care, the aim of the work done in substitute care is always family reunification or supporting parenthood to be strong enough alongside substitute care.

Foster parenting is a way of life in which ordinary everyday life and family life combine with child welfare work. A foster parent is required to be ready to commit to the child and their needs, and to be able to build a safe and predictable everyday life even when there is a great deal of uncertainty in the child's life. A foster parent does not need a qualification in social services, but the work requires an understanding of the child welfare operating environment, of child development and needs, and a readiness to cooperate with different actors and with the child's network of close relations.

Having worked as foster carers ourselves, we recognise the particular nature of foster parenting as a form of substitute care, and we want to offer foster carers strong, professional support.

Foster parenting brings the opportunity to get to know a child and the life story of their family as a whole, and to offer the child a safe home and continuity in human relationships, which brings a sense of meaning. Foster parenting also requires awareness and readiness to meet new situations in the family's everyday life. With foster parenting, the doors of the home open to the authorities and to the child's network of close relations, which brings its own particular quality to family life. A foster parent is required to have a genuine willingness and ability to commit to the child, but also the skill to recognise the significance of the child's biological family to the child and its role as part of substitute care. It is important to note that the decision about foster parenting affects the whole family, and its effects on relationships within the family should be assessed and worked through both at the stage of consideration and throughout the time spent as a foster parent.

Foster parenting is a decision that requires sufficient consideration and an assessment of one's own capacities and life situation from the perspective of foster parenting. Every child in need of a family placement has the right to be placed with a foster family that has made a conscious, value-based choice to become foster parents. To support this consideration and assessment, we offer families considering foster parenting a process-based Pride preparatory training or family-specific preparation, depending on the family's situation. For the duration of the placement we walk alongside foster carers in moments of joy, in everyday questions and in challenging situations, and we support them in cooperation with the authorities and the wider network.