When support for parents and child has not been successful enough for parents to care for their child, child protection services can house a child outside the home, from as little as three months or for longer periods, up to when to the child is 20 years old. Foster care is therefore never the first option that is considered. Child protection always starts by providing support for the home, parents and children so that they can live at home. However, if for some reason a child needs to go into foster care, it is the child protection services’ role to:

• Decide that the child will be put into foster care

• Enforce and take responsibility for the measure

• Selecting foster parents in consultation with the National Agency for Children and Families

• Make an foster care contract, arrange payments, supervise and support foster parents

• Make an agreement with the school about the education of the child, arrangements and other necessities

• Set guidelines for the communication and contact of the child with parents and other close relatives

When a child has been placed in foster care, the child protection services have a role in assessing and monitoring the quality of the resources and the child's accommodation outside the home:

• Closely monitoring the child’s condition and well-being

• Closely monitoring whether foster care goals are being met

• Gathering the necessary information to carry out this role

• Seeking to be in regular contact with a child in foster care

• Giving the child the opportunity to express his or her feelings in accordance with age and development

• Visiting children at foster homes as often as reasonably possible, but not less than twice during the first year of the measure and once a year thereafter

• Taking appropriate measures for the child, such as terminating the contract of foster care, if it is found that the treatment of the child in foster care is unacceptable, or the circumstances have changed so that it cannot be shown that the child's condition and safety is secured.