Foster Care - Linck

When a family becomes involved with child protection services at Linck, every effort is made to support the family to ensure children live safely with their family. If a child cannot live safely at home, their parents are supported to seek help from extended family, kin, friends, and their community to ensure a child lives safely with people they know and trust. When this is not available, children may be brought into the temporary care of Linck where foster parents provide children and youth with safe, family-based care until children return home to their parents.

Foster care provides children and youth with a safe family setting during a time of crisis. In many situations, foster care can provide vital support that enables parents to address issues that are putting their children’s safety and well-being at risk. In most situations children placed in foster care are reunified with their families once the issues that led to the child needing to be in care have been resolved. In other situations, foster care can open new doors to safety, permanency, and well-being for children and youth.

Children may need foster care for just a few days, a week, several months, or possibly longer. Foster parents work with Linck staff as part of a team to develop and support a plan of care for each child or youth in their care. The preferred plan is to reunite a child or youth with their family. Sometimes the plan may include exploring alternative permanency options such as kinship care, legal custody by a family member or foster parent, an independent living situation, or adoption.

Foster parents provide stability and a caring home that encourages a child or youth’s growth and well-being. While the legal responsibility for the child or youth remains with Linck, foster parents play an important role in a child or youth’s daily life.

Who Are Foster Parents?

Foster parents come from a variety of backgrounds and can be single, living common-law, married, and with or without children of their own. They range in age, cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. Foster parents from all communities are needed to ensure diverse, inclusive, and responsive services for children and youth.

Learn More About Foster Parents

Application & Approval Process

The fostering application and approval process takes time and involves assessment and training. To begin the process of becoming a foster parent, the first step is to complete our online inquiry form.

Learn More About the Application & Approval Process

Kinship in Care

When children and youth, who are in the care of a Children’s Aid Society, live with and are cared for by members of their extended family or kin, this is referred to as a Kinship in Care arrangement.

Learn More About Kinship in Care

Supportive Accommodations for Older Youth

The goal of this service is to provide youth 16 years and over with a better quality of life by providing safer housing opportunities through room and board so they can focus on their studies or employment.

Learn More About Supportive Accommodations

Pride Pre-Service Training

PRIDE is Ontario’s standardized training curriculum for foster, kinship in care, and adoptive applicants. This is a mandatory 27-hour training that all applicants are required to complete as part of the assessment and approval process.

Learn More About Pride Pre-Service Training

Safe Home Study Process

The SAFE (Structured Analysis Family Evaluation) home study is a comprehensive assessment to determine eligibility, suitability, and readiness to become a foster caregiver or adoptive parent.

Learn More About the Safe Home Study Process

What Supports Are Available to Foster Parents?

Foster caregivers get support in various ways including an assigned Resource Support Worker, a personalized learning and training plan, peer support with fellow foster parents, and reimbursement for expenses to care for children living with them.

View the Supports Available to Foster Parents