4. Support for Kinship Caregiving

For children whose parents are unable to care for them even temporarily, the first priority is kinship care with relatives who are willing and able to provide safe, quality care. Compared to children in non-relative placements, children living with kin experience a range of positive outcomes:

• Higher scores on physical, cognitive, emotional and skill-based indicators,

• Fewer behavioral problems as rated by their teachers and caregivers,

• Increased placement stability and continuity,

• Safety levels that equal or surpass those of children living with non-relative foster parents

• Greater satisfaction with the people they live with and fewer attempts to run away,

• Higher rate of placement with their siblings,

• Fewer school changes.[i]

C hildren who reunify with their birth parent(s) after kinship care are less likely to re-enter foster care than those who had been in non-relative foster placements or in group care facilities. [ii] C are by willing and able kin is also a critical way to maintain lifelong connections with an extended kinship network.

Of the approximately 6 million children who live in households headed by a grandparent or other relative, 2.3 million do so without the presence of a parent in the household. Of these children, approximately 1.8 million were privately placed with kin without the involvement of the child welfare system. Of the 500,000 placed with a relative following child welfare involvement, only about half are taken into state custody by the agency [iii]– an arrangement often called “formal” kinship care or “kinship foster care.” Many relative caregivers in both formal and informal kinship care arrangements are grandparents, and 20 percent live below the poverty line, often on fixed incomes.[iv] Consequently, children in kinship care are more likely than children living with their parents to be raised in poverty and in a single caregiver household.[v]

Kinship foster care accounts for an estimated 30 percent of national out-of-home placements, with wide local variation. Increasing demand for foster care, shrinking numbers of non-kin foster care providers, changing attitudes regarding family care, [vi] along with demonstrated benefits of family connections are driving the rise in kinship placements. Despite this growing reliance on kinship care, research demonstrates that children and caregivers in kinship foster care arrangements receive, request, and are offered fewer services and supports than non-kin foster caregivers. [vii]

Kinship care is more common in communities of color. In Illinois, African American children are four to five times more likely to live in kinship care than white children. Support for permanency with kin can help reduce racial disproportionality in foster care, and adequate support for kinship caregivers can help improve outcomes for vulnerable children of color.

Congress and most state legislatures have codified the preference for placement with relatives. At the same time, a range of policies are key to making the connection with kin and providing the assistance that they, like other caregivers, need to nurture children who have experienced abuse or neglect. Policies supporting kinship caregivers that are described in other sections of this report include:

· Kinship navigators that help caregivers find and obtain assistance to support both the child’s healthy development and their own capacity to parent. (See Policy I.5, Navigators to connect families with services.)

· Investment in parenting education and training, respite, and crisis care that help caregivers provide quality, stable homes for children if parenting challenges develop or as children’s developmental needs change. (See Policy I.3, Parenting education and training and I.4, Respite and short-term crisis care.)

· Relative location and engagement strategies that help to identify kin as soon as a child comes to the attention of the child welfare agency and to ensure that appropriate kin are available to care for the child if removal is necessary. (See Policy 3.1, Location and engagement of kin.)

Specific state policy options are presented for each of the following areas:

4.1 Permanent legal guardianship

4.2 " Preventative" permanent guardianship

4.3 Eliminating financial disincentives

4.4 Medical consent and school enrollement

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