Social Welfare Department

Foster care service

Service Description of Foster Care Service

Foster Care
Foster Care provides residential family care to children under 18 years of age whose parents cannot adequately take care of them due to various reasons, so that they can continue to enjoy family life until they can re-unite with their families, join an adoptive family or live independently.

Foster Care (Emergency)
Foster Care (Emergency) provides immediate and short-term residential family care to children under 18 years of age, whose parents cannot care for them because of emergency or crisis situations, so that they can continue to enjoy family life until they can reunite with their families or secure a long-term placement. The duration of care should not exceed 6 weeks.

Target Groups

Foster Child in need of Foster Care or Foster Care (Emergency)
Child between newborn and under 18 years of age, normal in health and intelligence or mildly mentally handicapped.

Foster parents
The ideal foster parents should preferably have:

-	happy family life and stable life style
-	good health and stable emotion
-	reached the age of 25 or above
-	primary education standard or above
-	tidy, clean and safe living condition with adequate living space
-	fondness for children and have experience and ability in child care
-	arrange adequate care plan for the child
-	readiness to accept social worker's investigation and guidance (Even though you cannot meet all of the above requirements, you are welcome to contact us at 2573 2282 to facilitate our consideration on individual case.)

Training or other programs for foster parents

Topic of Training Program	Program Date	Target	Venue
Workshop: Relaxing but Effective Parenting Objectives: To equip foster parents with effective parenting skills and to learn how to enhance parent-child relationship * The talk includes lectures, demonstration & case sharing Speaker: Social Worker of TWGHs with experience of 'Parents-child Interaction Therapy'	28. 6. 2013(Friday) 9:15 am - 12:00 noon	About 80 foster parents	Ngau Chi Wan Civic Centre - Lecture Room
Talk: How to render an effective support to Foster Children in relation to their Social and Emotional Development Objectives: To facilitate foster parents to learn knowledge and skills for getting forward a healthy social and emotional development of the foster children under their care Speaker: Clinical Psychologist of Social Welfare Department	13.9. 2013(Friday) 9:15 am - 12:30 pm	About 100 foster parents	Tuen Mun Town Hall- Lecture Room
Talk: How to deal with Foster Children Suffering from Specific Learning Difficulties Objectives: To enable foster parents to get knowledge of 'Specific Learning Difficulties' and to learn how to care effectively those foster children encountering the difficulties Speaker: Medical Officer of Health Department	15.11. 2013(Friday) 9:15 am - 12:30pm	About 100 foster parents	Pamela Youde Assessment Centre (Shatin) - Lecture Room

* Invitation letter will be sent to all foster parents six weeks before the execution of each training program

Central Foster Care Unit of Social Welfare Department will try its best to provide foster parents with support, inlcuding organizing training workshops & talks regularly particularly paying attention to their needs of training related to care for foster children. Its social workers will also conduct Liaison & Sharing Group in different districts regularly to collect opinions of foster parents and to identify their needs for continuous improvement and development of foster care.

Information on Service Statistics

As at the end of March 2013, the service statistics on foster care are as follows:

No. of Foster Homes	910
No. of Foster Children in Placement	917

Application Procedures

For Children in need of Foster Care Placement
Please contact integrated family service centres, medical social work units or other social service units for interviews and referrals.

For Families interested to become Foster Parents
Please contact Central Foster Care Unit of the Social Welfare Department
Room 2202, 22/F., Southorn Centre, 130 Hennessy Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong
Tel. No.: 2573 2282
Fax No.: 2573 2120

Opening Hours:

Monday to Friday
8:45 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
2:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Closed on Saturday, Sunday and Public Holidays

Or contact the foster care agencies which are responsible for recruiting foster homes in the 3 specific districts (West Kowloon, Hong Kong Island & New Territories East) for further enquiries.

Please refer to the attached MS-Word file (List of Foster Care Agencies for recruitment and assessment of foster homes)

Foster Care Leaflet

(Leaflet)

Fees and Charges

Foster care is free of charge. Foster parents will receive Foster Care Allowance for maintenance of foster children's monthly expenses. In addition, they will receive incentive payment which is non-taxable.

Intranet of Foster Care Service

'Intranet of Foster Care' is a newsletter published by the Central Foster Care Unit. The content of the Newsletter includes the latest development of foster care, programme forecast on training and publicity, etc. It aims at facilitating foster parents, foster children, referring workers and foster care workers, to attain a better understanding of the service development and enhance their mutual communication for a smooth cooperation.

Our most recent Newsletters (in Chinese version only) are placed below for your reference :

Feb 2013(Page 1) (Page 2) (Page 3) (Page 4)

Jun 2012(Page 1) (Page 2) (Page 3) (Page 4)

Nov 2011 (Page 1) (Page 2) (Page 3) (Page 4)

May 2011 (Page 1) (Page 2) (Page 3) (Page 4) (Name list 1) (Name list 2)

- Foster Care