World Foster Day Date in the current year: May 30, 2024

Foster care is a system where vulnerable minors are placed in families that take care of them for varying amounts of time, with placements lasting anywhere between a few days to several years. The main difference between fostering and adoption is that adoption is permanent and adoptive parents become the child’s legal guardians, whereas fostering placements are typically temporary, and foster parents are not the child’s legal guardians – the state is, via child protective services and the family court.

The foster care system is by no means perfect and there is a lot of room for improvement, especially in countries where social care is underfunded and social workers are underpaid and overworked, but it does have its benefits. Good foster homes provide children who have been neglected or abused with a safe environment and the stability of a roof over their heads, regular meals, education, and medical care. Good foster homes also expose children to a healthy family dynamic, giving them an opportunity to break out of negative cycles of abuse. Even a short-term placement with a loving and caring family can have a long-term effect on a child’s life.

World Foster Day is a global initiative that was started in 2018 by two organizations in Cape Town, South Africa, which collaborated to organize a Foster Conference for existing and potential foster parents. While preparing for the conference, they realized that there was no designated day to celebrate foster families and raise awareness about the need for more foster families, and that is how World Foster Day was created.

The main goal of World Foster Day is to highlight the work that foster families do for children in need of care around the world and raise awareness of the need for foster care through education and community engagement. There are many ways to get involved with the campaign and help to spread awareness. If you are a foster parent, share your story on social media to get others to learn more about fostering. If you know a foster family, let them know what wonderful work they are doing and do something nice for them: treat them to a meal, offer to babysit or help with household chores or errands, give them a small gift, etc.

Finally, you can spread the word about World Foster Day on social media in a fun and unique way. Draw a smiley face on three of your fingers (index, middle and ring) to represent a family and the importance of family-based care, snap a picture of these smiley faces, and post it on social media using the hashtag #WorldFosterDay.

World Foster Day is not the only observance celebrating foster care; some countries have their own national observances. For example, the United States celebrates National Foster Care Day on the first Tuesday of May, and in Poland, Foster Care Day (Dzień Rodzicielstwa Zastępczego) is observed on May 30, the day before World Foster Day.