Twenty years ago, when this journal first published a special issue on kinship care (Wilson & Chipungu, 1996), the focus was on the formal placement of children with kin after the children were taken into public custody. This special issue of the Child Welfare Journal focuses on the much larger number of kinship caregivers, who either intervene on their own or accept the assistance of child protective authorities that facilitate informal arrangements without taking legal custody. It is the larger combined population of formal and informal kinship placements, to which the common definition of kinship care appropriately applies: "the fulltime care, nurturing, and protection of a child by relatives, members of their Tribe or clan, godparents, stepparents, or other adults who have a family relationship to a child."
