What Is Fostering a Child and How Does It Work?

Fostering a child means opening your home to a child who has been removed from their birth family by court order, caring for them day to day while a state or county child welfare agency keeps legal custody and works toward a permanent home. It is a temporary arrangement by design. The agency makes the major decisions, you handle daily life, and the entire system is built to move the child back to their family, into adoption, or into legal guardianship as quickly as it safely can.

How a Child Enters Foster Care

A child does not enter foster care through a handshake between adults. It takes a court order. When a child welfare agency investigates a report of abuse or neglect and concludes the child is unsafe at home, a judge authorizes removal and transfers legal custody to the agency. The agency then decides where the child lives, what school they attend, and how their medical care is handled. Foster parents receive physical custody, which covers everything about daily life: meals, bedtime, homework, doctor visits, soccer practice.

Birth parents do not automatically lose everything when their child is placed in care. Unless a court formally terminates their rights, they typically keep residual rights, including the ability to visit and to weigh in on decisions about the child’s future. Federal law requires the court to review each case at least every six months to check whether the placement still fits and whether the family is making progress. A full permanency hearing must happen within twelve months of the child entering care and at least every twelve months after that.¹

Types of Foster Care Placements

Not every placement looks the same. What a child gets depends on the urgency of the situation, the child’s needs, and who is available.

Kinship care puts the child with a relative or close family friend. Federal law requires agencies to give preference to relatives, because children placed with someone they already know usually have an easier time with the disruption. Kinship caregivers may go through an expedited approval, though they still have to meet basic safety standards.
Emergency placement is for the moment of crisis, when a child is removed with no pre-identified home ready. It can last a few days or stretch considerably longer while the agency finds something more stable.
Therapeutic foster care is for children with significant medical, emotional, or behavioral needs. Caregivers receive specialized training and work closely with therapists. These placements typically pay higher reimbursement rates.
Respite care gives the primary foster family a short break, often a weekend, with another licensed provider taking the child. It is not a separate placement so much as a relief valve that keeps long-term placements from falling apart.

Shared Parenting with the Birth Family

Because reunification is usually the goal, many agencies encourage shared parenting between foster parents and birth families. In practice, that can mean keeping a journal and photos of the child’s daily life to share with birth parents, helping facilitate phone calls, keeping family pictures in the child’s room, and sometimes inviting birth parents to school events or medical appointments. The foster parent acts less like a replacement and more like a temporary teammate.

What Foster Parents Can Actually Decide

For decades, foster parents needed agency approval for ordinary childhood experiences like sleepovers, sports teams, or school field trips. Federal legislation in 2014 established the reasonable and prudent parent standard, which lets foster parents make the same common-sense calls any parent would about extracurricular activities, social events, sports, dating, driver’s education, and even a haircut.¹

The standard asks the caregiver to weigh the child’s age, maturity, and developmental level against any safety concerns, then decide whether the activity supports normal childhood development. Every state must build this standard into its licensing rules, and every child care institution that receives federal foster care funds has to designate at least one official authorized to apply it.²

Who Can Become a Foster Parent

The specifics vary by state, but federal law sets a floor. Most states require applicants to be at least 21, though some set it at 18. You can be single, married, or in a domestic partnership. Financial stability matters, but no one expects foster parents to be wealthy. The test is that you can cover your own household expenses without needing the child’s maintenance payments to get by.

Federal law requires fingerprint-based criminal background checks through national databases for every prospective foster or adoptive parent. Some convictions are automatic disqualifiers: any felony for child abuse or neglect, crimes against children, sexual assault, or homicide permanently bars approval. Felony convictions for physical assault, battery, or drug offenses within the past five years also result in denial.³

Housing requirements follow a common pattern. Each child needs a separate bed, children of opposite sexes over a certain age cannot share a bedroom, and the home has to have enough space for the foster child beyond what the family already needs. Applicants also provide medical clearance from a physician, personal references from non-relatives, and copies of relevant legal documents such as marriage licenses or divorce decrees.

The Licensing Process

Once you apply, the agency conducts a home study. It is the most involved part of the process and typically takes three to six months. A caseworker visits your home, interviews every household member (often individually and together), and writes a detailed report covering your family background, relationships, daily routines, parenting experience, and readiness to take on a foster child. The physical inspection checks working smoke detectors, secure storage of medications and hazardous materials, and basic fire safety.

You also complete pre-service training before receiving your license. Required hours vary widely by state, from as few as four to as many as thirty. Two curricula dominate nationally: MAPP (Model Approach to Partnerships in Parenting) at roughly 30 hours and PRIDE (Parent Resources for Information, Development, and Education) at about 27 hours. More than half of states formally require one of the two. Training covers trauma-informed care, child development, the legal framework of foster care, and the administrative side of working with your agency. Once the agency approves the home study, it issues an official foster care license and placement calls can begin.

Payments and Taxes

Foster parents receive monthly maintenance payments to cover the child’s day-to-day costs: food, clothing, shelter, school supplies, routine supervision. These payments are not a salary. Federal rules explicitly prohibit reimbursing foster parents for what amounts to “ordinary parental duties” and exclude costs like counseling, therapy, or recreational activities from the maintenance rate.⁴

The monthly amount varies significantly by state and by the child’s age and needs. Base rates for a school-aged child can run from roughly $400 to over $1,000 per month depending on where you live, with therapeutic placements paying considerably more. Children with documented physical, mental, or emotional needs that require extra care may qualify for additional difficulty-of-care payments on top of the base rate.

For tax purposes, qualified foster care payments are excluded from gross income. You do not report them as earnings on your federal return. The exclusion covers both regular maintenance payments and difficulty-of-care payments, though there are caps on the number of individuals a home can claim the exclusion for.⁵

You may also be able to claim a foster child as a qualifying child for the Earned Income Tax Credit if the child was placed by a government agency, tribal government, or court order and lived in your home for more than half the tax year. Temporary absences for school, medical care, or vacation count as time living with you.⁶

Where Every Case Is Heading

The whole system is oriented around getting a child to a permanent home. Reunification with the birth family is the first goal in nearly every case. The case plan created when a child enters care lays out the specific steps parents must complete, such as substance abuse treatment, parenting classes, or securing stable housing, before the court will consider sending the child home.

When reunification stalls, federal law forces the issue. The Adoption and Safe Families Act requires states to file a petition to terminate parental rights when a child has been in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months. There are three exceptions: the child is being cared for by a relative, the agency has documented a compelling reason why termination would not serve the child’s interests, or the state has not provided the family with the services it promised in the case plan.¹

Once parental rights are terminated, the plan shifts to adoption or legal guardianship. The court must consider both in-state and out-of-state placement options during permanency hearings. For older teenagers where none of those options are realistic, a court may approve “another planned permanent living arrangement,” but only after documenting a compelling reason why adoption, guardianship, and return home are all off the table. The law treats that outcome as a last resort.⁷

Aging Out and Extended Care

Foster care used to end at 18, and young people were released into adulthood with whatever they had managed to put together. The outcomes were poor. Research consistently shows that youth who age out without a permanent family have dramatically higher rates of homelessness, unemployment, and criminal justice involvement than their peers.

The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 gave states the option to extend Title IV-E foster care eligibility to age 19, 20, or 21. Over 36 states, the District of Columbia, and nine tribal governments have taken up that option. To remain eligible past 18, a young person must be completing high school or an equivalent credential, enrolled in postsecondary or vocational education, participating in an employment program, working at least 80 hours a month, or unable to meet any of those conditions because of a documented medical condition.⁸

The federal Chafee Foster Care Program provides states with funding to support youth who were in foster care at age 14 or older. Services include help obtaining a high school diploma, vocational training, job placement, financial literacy education, substance abuse prevention, and housing assistance. Education and training vouchers help cover the cost of postsecondary education. These supports extend to former foster youth up to age 21, or 23 in states that have certified the higher age limit.⁹

Caseworkers are required to begin transition planning at age 14, including identifying the specific services a child will need to move into adulthood successfully. The earlier that planning starts, the better the odds.¹

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 675 – Definitions
2
Social Security Administration. Social Security Act Section 471 – State Plan for Foster Care and Adoption Assistance
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 671 – State Plan for Foster Care and Adoption Assistance
4
Child Welfare Policy Manual. Title IV-E Foster Care Maintenance Payments Program – Allowable Costs
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 131 – Certain Foster Care Payments
6
Internal Revenue Service. Qualifying Child Rules
7
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Freeing Children for Adoption Within the Adoption and Safe Families Act Timeline Part 1
8
Child Welfare Information Gateway. Extension of Foster Care Beyond Age 18
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 677 – John H Chafee Foster Care Program for Successful Transition to Adulthood