This comprehensive policy report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation summarizes what is known about kinship care in the United States, identifies the problems and issues these families face, and recommends how best to support caregivers as they step up to take responsibility for children in their extended families and communities. Extended family members and close family friends care for more than 2.7 million children in the United States, an increase of almost 18 percent over the past decade. The vast majority of these living arrangements are established informally within families. Nevertheless, about 104,000 of these children have been placed with kin formally, as part of the state-supervised foster care system. In fact, children placed with kin by the formal foster care system represent one-fourth of all children who have been removed from their homes by the public child welfare system and placed in state custody. The report reviews the common challenges faced by kinship families and barriers to effective use of kinship families in the child welfare system.
According to U.S. Census Bureau data, kinship caregivers are more likely to be poor, single, older, less educated, and unemployed than families in which at least one parent is present. The majority of kinship caregivers are not receiving the financial help for which they are eligible, and many do not even realize that certain government supports exist to help them care for the children they have taken in. Whether they took in children through informal arrangements or through the state-supervised foster care system, all kinship caregivers face the emotional, physical, and financial strain of raising children who have experienced the trauma of parental separation. Many kinship caregivers take on this responsibility without government assistance, often because they do not realize they could get help. And even those who are able to get help find themselves navigating through thickets of bureaucratic rules and procedures that evolved without kinship families in mind. Despite the fact that policies and laws prefer placement with kin over placement with families unknown to the child, state reliance on kinship families for children in foster care varies widely, ranging from 6 percent to 46 percent.
The reports provides a series of recommendations to increase the financial stability of kinship families and strengthen kinship families involved in the child welfare system, including the establishment of a comprehensive and coordinated network of services and supports for kinship families at the community level.
