Kinship placements are associated with achieving permanency but “progress moves” into kinship settings may disrupt stable placements, which are also beneficial. This study used event history models to compare rates of permanency among children transitioning between kinship and non-kinship foster placements immediately after being taken into care in the United States.

This report, from the UK All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Kinship Care, shines a spotlight on the experiences of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) who are raised by kinship carers. The report reveals that both the child welfare system and the SEND system were not designed with kinship families in mind.

This article examines the role of kinship care in Thailand, exploring its scale, drivers, and implications within the broader context of family-based care reform and deinstitutionalisation. It highlights the need to strengthen formal kinship care systems while addressing socioeconomic factors that contribute to unsupported informal care arrangements.

This report examines the characteristics, circumstances, and support needs of children and families involved in Special Guardianship Orders (SGOs) project in Wales. It aims to strengthen understanding of factors that influence children’s long-term outcomes and inform more effective support services for kinship care families.

This study explores how kinship lineage and inheritance norms in Ghana influence decisions about placing children in the care of maternal or paternal grandmothers. While traditionally significant, findings suggest these norms are weakening due to legal reforms, social change, and interethnic marriages, with limited influence on most contemporary kinship care arrangements.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children with disabilities are overrepresented in child welfare systems, yet little is known about their experiences; this study draws on yarning sessions with 46 kinship carers in Western Australia as part of the I-CaRe WA project. Findings highlight barriers to disability assessments and services, underscoring the urgent need for reforms, improved training, and better support to enhance outcomes for both carers and children.

This study examines the presence of compassion fatigue among foster and kinship carers in the United Kingdom and explores factors associated with it using survey data from 180 caregivers. Findings indicate that carers experience higher levels of compassion fatigue than helping professionals, with greater fatigue linked to lower parenting satisfaction, attachment avoidance, and unmet expectations of social support, highlighting important implications for social and clinical support systems.

This study examines the views of Australian foster and kinship carers on the importance of cultural connection for children from culturally diverse backgrounds, finding broad agreement that culture is central to identity and wellbeing. The findings highlight challenges in delivering cultural care and underscore the need for training in cultural humility, improved cultural data collection, and collaborative cultural care planning that includes children and birth parents as key decision-makers.

This study finds that grandparenting as primary care in China is generally associated with lower overall and social-emotional development among preschool children. However, it can have a protective effect for children living with a single parent—particularly in low-income families—highlighting the need for targeted support and training for grandparent caregivers.

This article examines kinship care as an unwritten but legally significant source of child protection law, drawing on concepts of living law to show how informal caregiving practices operate across diverse legal and cultural contexts yet remain largely invisible within formal legal systems. Using comparative analysis from Europe and the Global South, it highlights both the strengths and risks of informal kinship care and calls for a child-centred, legally pluralistic approach to better align community norms with state and international law.