What is foster care?
Foster care is a service provided to families that are experiencing a major crisis or difficulty in parenting such as abuse, neglect, substance abuse, mental health issues, stress, and/or lack of family support. Foster care is intended to be a short term situation until a permanent placement can be made, preferably back with the biological parents.
Families receive an array of services aimed at correcting problems that brought their child into foster care. Unfortunately, some families are unable to overcome their problems. In these cases, their parental rights may be terminated and their child becomes eligible for adoption.
What is adoption?
Adoption is a way of legally uniting parents with children or youth who were not born to them.
Adoptive parents provide a permanent, lifelong commitment and have all of the rights and
responsibilities as if the child or youth were born to them. The goal of adoption is to
provide the child or youth with a permanent, stable, committed family. If a child’s
parental rights are terminated, their foster parents have the opportunity to become their adoptive parents.
