Abstract
Collaborative partnerships are a major factor in achieving positive outcomes for children, youth, and families. They can lead to a common and unified understanding of the needs of children, youth, and families; identification of gaps in services and supports; and coordinated efforts to address those gaps across child welfare and other human and social services. While it is recognized that progress has been made in developing policy and defining standards of practice related to supporting kinship families, there remains a need for continuous assessment of current policy and practice and future directions for enhancing outcomes. University at Albany, New York State Kinship Navigator, and the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) formed a collaborative partnership to plan and host a Kinship Care Summit in Albany, New York in September 2016. The Summit included presentations by authors of kinship manuscripts that were accepted for this Special Issue on Kinship Care of the Child Welfare Journal. Building on the information shared by authors and reactors to the presentations, the latter half of the Summit was devoted to an examination of selected current kinship care issues. Summit participants worked in groups to discuss the issues and develop recommendations for the future. The focus was on all kinship families—those in which child welfare is involved, and particularly those without child welfare involvement.