116. Agencies and facilities should ensure that, wherever appropriate, carers are prepared to respond to children with special needs, notably those living with HIV/AIDS or other chronic physical or mental illnesses, and children with physical or mental disabilities. 2. Foster care 117. The competent authority or agency should devise a system, and should train concerned staff accordingly, to assess and match the needs of the child with the abilities and resources of potential foster carers and to prepare all concerned for the placement. 118. A pool of accredited foster carers should be identified in each locality, who can provide children with care and protection while maintaining ties to family, community and cultural group. 119. Special preparation, support and counselling services for foster carers should be developed and made available to carers at regular intervals, before, during and after the placement. 120. Carers should have, within fostering agencies and other systems involved with children without parental care, the opportunity to make their voice heard and to influence policy. 121. Encouragement should be given to the establishment of associations of foster carers that can provide important mutual support and contribute to practice and policy development. C. Residential care 122. Facilities providing residential care should be small and organized around the rights and needs of the child, in a setting as close as possible to a family or small group situation. Their objective should generally be to provide temporary care and to contribute actively to the child’s family reintegration or, if this is not possible, to secure his/her stable care in an alternative family setting, including through adoption or kafala of Islamic law, where appropriate. 123. Measures should be taken so that, where necessary and appropriate, a child solely in need of protection and alternative care may be accommodated separately from children who are subject to the criminal justice system. 124. The competent national or local authority should establish rigorous screening procedures to ensure that only appropriate admissions to such facilities are made. 125. States should ensure that there are sufficient carers in residential care settings to allow individualized attention and to give the child, where appropriate, the opportunity to bond with a specific carer. Carers should also be deployed within the care setting in such a way as to implement effectively its aims and objectives and ensure child protection. 126. Laws, policies and regulations should prohibit the recruitment and solicitation of children for placement in residential care by agencies, facilities or individuals. D. Inspection and monitoring 127. Agencies, facilities and professionals involved in care provision should be accountable to a specific public authority, which should ensure, inter alia, frequent inspections comprising both scheduled and unannounced visits, involving discussion with and observation of the staff and the children. 128. To the extent possible and appropriate, inspection functions should include a component of training and capacity-building for care providers. 129. States should be encouraged to ensure that an independent monitoring mechanism is in place, with due consideration for the Principles relating to the Status of National Institutions for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights (Paris Principles). The monitoring mechanism should be easily accessible to children, parents and those responsible for children without parental care. The functions of the monitoring mechanism should include: 14