There are about 40 families that take care of about 300 foster children in Lithuania. Education is difficult in those families because foster children already have a bad experience of life. They act according to a formed model of behavior, habits, rules that are not easy to change. Foster parents face difficult educational problems. This article helps to explain the characteristic of religious education in the foster family. Christian education is discussed by three essential aspects of giving love. Mentioned aspects are caring, liberating and educating love that helps to introduce the responsibility foster parents has taken upon themselves.

Child’s custody and guardianship facilitate implementation of child’s rights to protection, provision and involvement, when his/her parents are incapable or unwilling to assume this duty. One of the priority forms of child’s custody includes foster families, where an attempt is made to ensure such conditions which are needed for his/her physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development (Vaiko gerovės valstybės politikos koncepcija, Official Gazette, 30 05 2003, No. 52-2316). The goal of this article is to discuss peculiarities of child’s custody in a foster family. The first part deals with preconditions for foster family emergence, mechanisms of its establishment and financing; the second part of the article presents data of the empirical research, which reveal expression of foster parents’ competences fostering children.