The period of foster care for a child can vary from a minimum of 3 months, to a year or even longer. Some of IAPA's foster families have been with the agency for a long time. Their devotion and skill in nurturing children left in adverse circumstances has given them a new lease for life before they joined their adoptive families. Foster Care for the Child of a Family in Crisis Temporary care in a family other than one's own becomes necessary when the parents face overwhelming crisis. It may be acute illness and hospitalisation, accident, desertion by a spouse, displacement or any other short term or long term set back.
Children are at grave risk when they are neglected and left unsupervised.
The first option is to find a suitable substitute family rather than putting the child in an institution. Preferably, a relative, or a neighbour capable of taking in the child, with financial help and support from the agency, is identified. failing this, even an unrelated but otherwise suitable family is considered for providing temporary foster care. IAPA is one of the agencies that the government of Maharashtra has chosen to implement their programme of temporary foster care for children. The aim is to prevent placement of children in institutions when they are at risk due to family crisis. At present the government provides partial support for foster care of 50 children.