Legislation will soon be introduced in the U.S. state of Georgia to address concerns stemming from a recent "kinship care" study conducted to assess how the state could improve services to support grandparents and other relatives who take children into their homes when their parents can no longer care for them. The study was initiated by one politician in 2013 after helping her parents navigate the complicated human services and legal systems when they were adopting her niece. She began looking into how grandparents and other kinship caregivers were faring in Georgia and discovered that many were struggling because they needed additional support or were unaware of services already available to them. Those services include Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program benefits.
As part of the new legislation, a kinship care website will be created for the state, seeking to remove impediments to accessing services and information. Another problem that some lawmakers seek to address in Georgia is that kinship providers receive less financial assistance and other benefits compared to foster care providers.