Emergency Placements

As suggested, these are required at very short notice and are often made after 5 p.m., during the night, or at weekends by our Out of Hours service. Emergency placements are usually needed because of a family crisis, or because a child abuse investigation is being undertaken, or occasionally because a placement with another foster carer has broken down for some reason. Often when an emergency placement is made, there is little or no information available about a child/young person, or his/her family background.

It is difficult to define exactly how long an emergency placement might last for -- it could be one or two nights, or it could be several weeks -- but it will usually be time-limited in relation to a child or young person's individual circumstances.

We particularly need carers who can provide emergency placements for older children and groups of brothers and sisters, across as wide an age range as possible; for example, 0 - 12 years, 5 -15 years, or 0 - 15 years.   We also need carers who are able to accept the very challenging and difficult behaviour which might result from a child or young person being removed suddenly from familiar surroundings.