Fostering better care: Improving foster care provision around the world

The paper suggests that further efforts are needed to ensure that foster care is an option open to a wider range of children. Foster care leads to better outcomes for children than harmful forms of residential care, and may be a more suitable choice than kinship care or adoption for some girls and boys. Foster care is a highly flexible form of alternative care that can provide a family home for children for long or short periods, prevent a permanent loss of parental care or provide therapeutic support. In the long run at least, foster care is more cost-effective than residential care.