State Child Welfare Policy Guide: Part of the Policy Matters Series

3.1 Location and engagement of kin

Policies that require diligent or reasonable efforts to identify, locate and engage kin are critical to ensuring lifelong family connections for children involved with the child welfare system.  These efforts are the first step to exploring the roles that caring adults can have in the lives of vulnerable children.  Not only do caring kin offer invaluable resources to children, according to international humanitarian law referenced in the Geneva Convention, relatives have a right to know that a member of their family network needs help.  Pioneers of a growing body of practice in locating and engaging relatives of children involved with the child welfare system report that the typical American child living in out-of-home care has 100 to 300 living relatives and that usually some kin are willing and able to provide emotional and/or other support for the child. [i] While internet search technology has boosted the ability to local kin, this is only one step in engaging kin and ensuring permanent connections for children.  

The Fostering Connections legislation has three provisions that support location and engagement of kin.  They include:

·         Requires states to exercise due diligence to identify and provide notice to all adult grandparents and other adult relatives of a child within 30 days after the child is removed from his or her home. 

·         Allows child welfare agencies to directly access the Federal Parent Locator Service to help locate children’s parents and help them find relatives; and

·         Authorizes competitive Family Connections grants through which intensive family finding is one of the allowable activities under the grant program. [ii]  

State policies that build on the federal provisions and help to ensure effective relative location and engagement of kin contain several key components:

Ongoing search for relatives, including absent parents , is required from the time of the child’s initial contact with the child welfare system to permanency.  While federal statute requires efforts to locate and identify relatives within 30 days of a child’s placement, state policies can reinforce the importance of on-going and continuous search to unearth as much support possible for the child. 

In Washington State, the child welfare agency may conduct a relative search at any and all of the following times:

o   Original placement,

o   Family team decision meetings,

o   Shared planning meetings (permanency planning meetings or any staffing),

o   Anytime a placement changes or staff have any contact with child/family,

o   When a case file is reviewed.

Contacting absent parents (usually fathers) only when a decision has been made to terminate parental rights is a great disservice to both children and their parents.  The New York State child welfare agency has developed policy and protocol aimed specifically at locating and engaging absent parents as early as possible. [iii]

Washington recently passed a law that requires social workers, the courts and all other service providers to inquire about a child's family in an effort to identify and locate family members at every stage of a foster -care case. The law has demonstrated some success, doubling the number of children in relative placements as opposed to foster care over a two year time period (from 19 percent to 37 percent).

Reasonable or diligent search efforts to locate relatives are required.  State statutes of California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, and Washington provide a standard for action by specifically mandating the public child welfare agency to make diligent or reasonable efforts to locate kin as possible placement resources.  Utah law allows the court to order a reasonable search.  Florida law requires that, if the court does not commit a child to the temporary legal custody of a relative, legal custodian, or other adult willing to care for the child, the disposition order must state the reasons for the decision. [iv]  

Court determination of diligent or reasonable efforts is required.  California, Florida and New York provide court oversight by requiring a court determination of whether the child welfare agency made diligent efforts to locate kin. [v]

Documentation of search efforts is required.  By documenting actions to locate and engage relatives, child welfare agencies not only provide evidence of the diligence of their search; a record that can help connect children with kin in the future is preserved.  Documentation requirements are usually specified in agency policy. [vi]

Policy Options :  States can promote the location and engagement of kin by adopting 1, 2, 3, or 4 of the following policies:

·         Reasonable or diligent efforts to locate and engage kin are required.

·         Court determination of reasonable or diligent search efforts is required.

·         Immediate and ongoing search efforts are required. 

·         Documentation of search efforts and review of that documentation is required.

Policy Options :  States can require grandparent notification by adopting one of the following policies (listed in order of increasing timeliness):

·         Grandparent notification is required within 60 days.  

·         Grandparent notification is required within 15 days.

·         Grandparent notification is required at the time of placement.

·         Grandparent notification and information about options for relative care is required before placement of a child in state custody.