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When children cannot remain home: foster family care and kinship care
1Center for Social Services Research, School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley, USA.
Insights
Kinship foster care is growing, with relatives caring for children instead of traditional foster homes. While kinship care supports children and families, it may delay legal permanence.
Area of Science:
- Child Welfare
- Family Studies
- Social Work
Background:
- Child welfare agencies increasingly place children with relatives (kinship care) instead of traditional foster homes.
- This shift is influenced by foster home availability, demand, societal attitudes, and payment policies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine the growth and characteristics of kinship foster care.
- To compare kinship and traditional foster parents and agency supports.
- To evaluate kinship care's impact on child welfare goals, including permanence.
Main Methods:
- The study analyzes factors contributing to the rise in kinship care.
- It discusses differences between kin and traditional foster parents.
- It reviews research findings on kinship care outcomes.
Main Results:
- Kinship foster care has rapidly increased due to various systemic factors.
- Kinship caregivers differ from traditional foster parents in characteristics and support.
- Kinship care effectively protects children and supports families but may hinder legal permanence.
Conclusions:
- Kinship care offers benefits for child protection and family support.
- Achieving legal permanence for children may be slower in kinship placements.
- Policy development requires balancing family strengths with agency oversight and resources.
Abstract:
Despite the best efforts of child welfare agencies, community agencies, and individuals, some children are not safe in their homes and must be placed in substitute care settings by child welfare authorities. Increasingly, as this article points out, child welfare agencies are placing children in the homes of their relatives rather than in traditional foster family homes (31% of all children in out-of-home care in the early 1990s were living with kin). This article discusses how such factors as the availability of foster homes, the demand for foster care, attitudes toward the extended families of troubled parents, and policies regarding payment for the costs of care have contributed to the rapid growth in kinship foster care. It discusses differences in the personal characteristics of kin and traditional foster parents and in the supports provided to the caregivers by child welfare agencies. Research findings suggest that kinship homes can promote the child welfare goals of protecting children and supporting families, but they are less likely to facilitate the prompt achievement of legal permanence for children. To forge a coherent policy toward kinship caregivers, officials must balance the natural strengths of informal, private exchanges among family members with the power of government agencies to provide both resources and oversight.