Foster Care

Foster care is one of the crucial child welfare service delivery options that provides appropriate, family-based, temporary nursing facilities for infants, children, and youths, who are removed from their birth parents' home because of evidence of child abuse, neglect, parents' substance and/or alcohol abuse, maltreatment, and other strenuous circumstances, while maintaining the legal rights of children and/or family relationships with them. When infants, children, or youths are determined to live separately from their birth parents, social workers or caseworkers arrange a planned, goal-oriented, child welfare service in which an agency-approved, trained foster family takes charge of children's welfare. Based on the fundamental concept suggesting that the family is the most significant and indispensable institution for rearing children, the United States (U.S.) child welfare service has been centered on foster care. The goal of foster care is to protect and nurture children