Please bear with me. I have googled but being an English speaker (slowly learning French) but could not find any information.
I have lived in Switzerland for a year with my partner (he has been here for many years) and I see myself settling here and growing old.
I can't have children for many reasons and am very okay with this. I have spent my life teaching and working with children in the UK. I would still like to help bring up children- foster children for periods of time before they are adopted but I can't seem to understand if fostering is a thing here (or children just stay in foster homes- that is what the info I have found told me). Not being a French speaker means I am struggling to find info.
Thanks for your help english forum and thanks for taking the time to read this
Just to add - this would be for in the future, when my partner and I own a house here and I am a much better French speaker. It would just be great to get an idea if it were even an option? Thanks
Since my French is abysmal I could only do a basic search for the route to fostering in Geneva. But I admire your wanting to help and so I wanted to reply with what little information I have. Perhaps this might help to get you started.
From the Geneva website, steps to becoming a foster family:
To become a foster parent, you need to have been living for quite some time so they can do the necessary police, etc, checks on you. You also need to be very well integrated and have near native language knowledge, so you can deal effectively with any behaviour, social, school, health, etc, etc, issue, and homework, etc.
One of our daughters has recently become a foster carer in the UK- the checks were very extensive, for all direct family too, even us living abroad (as we will visit and stay over, as soon as Covid allows, and will come on holiday here)- months of interviews and training too.
In French only which, as Jackie has correctly said, you would need in order to be allowed to foster children. If your French is not yet at that level, and you're just doing your first research, you might like to use deepl as well as google translate, as they render slightly different translations.
Fostering is the responsibility of the cantonal authorities, so each canton will do things their own way and you will have to go through that authority. The authority will carry out thorough background checks on you, hence the need to be able to communicate in French, German or Italian as appropriate.