ALASKA FOSTER CARE
Become a foster parent, change a life
You don’t have to live in a big city to be a foster parent. You don’t have to have a big house, a fancy car or lots of money. What you need is a home. What you need is a heart that can open to a child who needs you.
Looking for financial or reimbursement options? OCS has centralized points of contact for processing resource family financial requests.
Foster Care Applications
Please fill out all forms, print, and follow the directions to mail all completed forms to the region listed on the instructions page.
Non-Relative Foster Care Application
Relative Foster Care Application
Become a Foster Parent
"You don't have to live in a big city to be a foster parent. You don't have to have a big house, a fancy car, or lots of money. What you need is a home. What you need is a heart that can open to a child that needs you."
Become a foster parent from Alaska Department of Health (Alaska DOH) on YouTube.
More Resources for Alaska Foster Parents
Alaska Center for Resource Families
Access the tools, training, and support you need to navigate your journey as a foster, adoptive, guardianship, or kinship family.
Alaska Impact Alliance
The Alaska Impact Alliance is a statewide alliance of prevention partners joining communities in implementing supports for children and families.
Beacon Hill
Beacon Hill supports vulnerable children and families by working to PRESERVE family connection, PREPARE families for lasting stability, and PROVIDE the care and tools needed to sustain them.
Foster Care Overview
Each year, thousands of Alaska's children are placed in out-of-home care. Typically, it's because a child has been determined to be unsafe or at high risk of maltreatment, in their family home. These children range from newborns to teenagers and they live in communities all across Alaska.
OCS gathers information to make an informed assessment about whether the child is unsafe or at high risk, and the extent of the family's protective capacities. OCS provides services to families with children remaining in their home as well as to families whose children have been placed in out-of-home care.
On average, there are approximately 3,000 children each month in foster care in Alaska. Foster homes provide children in care a temporary, safe, stable and nurturing home until they can be reunited with their families. Some children stay in a foster home for days or weeks; some stay for months. In some cases, children are unable to safely return to their family home and are placed permanently with another family.
When out-of-home placement is needed to keep a child safe, OCS makes diligent efforts to identify, evaluate and consider relatives, family friends and those culturally tied to the family as the primary placement option. When relatives cannot be a placement option for the child, OCS will make efforts to actively recruit and support families within the child's home community and in close proximity to the child's parents, to assure that the child may continue to maintain important and lasting cultural, educational and community-based connections.
Please consider becoming a foster parent today. It may be the most rewarding thing you ever do. You will help keep children safe, strengthen your community and give your own life a meaningful new challenge. Alaska welcomes and supports all families equally. Families of every race, culture, and ethnicity are needed to help children grow with a strong sense of racial and cultural identity. Applicants are considered regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, religion or sex.
As a foster parent, you will receive training based on the child's needs and help a child cope with the challenges that life brings. You can meet and get to know other foster parents, and agency staff can give you support. Please check the links on the upper right hand side of this page for more information on how to become a foster or adoptive parent.
HELPFUL RESOURCES
Connecting you to resources
Family and Community Services
Children thrive when communities
stand behind them.
