For Better Child Welfare Outcomes, Always Family First

Melinda Lewis (University of Kansas School of Social Welfare)

What is “kinship care”?

Parenting can be challenging even in the best of circumstances. And sometimes, parents in crisis are unable to care safely for their children. When struggling parents look for help, other relatives or close friends (often referred to as kin) are usually their first choice. Collectively, relative and kin placements are referred to as ‘kinship care’ or ‘kinship placements’. Increasingly, research has demonstrated what parents and children have long known: these kinship caregiving relationships are usually the best choice, too. Kinship placement can be informal (by parent arrangement) or formal (referred by the child welfare agency), temporary (during acute crisis) or permanent (with official custody transfer). Kinship caregivers’ dedication and affection provide crucial protection to children reeling from disruption at home, but steering children through the challenges of growing up requires more than just love. And kinship families deserve more than our gratitude. Kinship caregivers deserve the support (financial, educational, emotional) all caregivers need, as well as specific investments to facilitate their families’ success. Kansas can reform our policies and practices to make kinship caregiving the evidence-based pillar of an effective, family-centered, and empowering child welfare response.

Why kinship care?

Supporting parents so they can safely care for their children should be the priority of all child welfare. When out-of-home alternatives are needed, kinship placements offer crucial advantages over placement with those unknown to the family. Most crucially, kinship care contributes to more positive child outcomes. Placing children with relatives or kin also addresses other system imperatives, including insufficient supply of qualified foster families and rising costs associated with maintaining a “stranger care” system, but helping kids thrive is what matters most. And here, family matters.

Better Children’s Mental Health: Compared with those in other foster placements, children in kinship care demonstrate fewer behavioral problems and mental health disorders and express less distress related to foster care.

More Stable Connections: While removal is always associated with some loss, children placed in kinship care show more positive feelings about their placement and are more likely than children in other foster care to stay connected to their siblings, communities, and cultural identities. Child welfare practitioners should always ask if there are ways to remove the danger, rather than the child, but when removal is necessary, kinship placements can ensure bonds are preserved.

Greater Permanency: Permanency is the official goal of child welfare interventions, and kinship placements deliver. Nationally, almost all (93%) kinship placements are assessed as stable and appropriate. » In Kansas, between 2017 and 2023, 76% of children placed with relatives achieve reunification, compared to 67% of those initially placed in non-relative foster care. Other analysis has found that initial kinship placement increases the rate of reunification by 29% and of guardianship by 224%, as kinship arrangements set the foundation of stable, strong relationships that permanency requires.

Positive Educational Outcomes: While out-of-home care inevitably complicates children’s academic achievement, children in kinship placements are significantly more likely to graduate than those placed in non-relative foster homes, in part because kinship placements are more likely to preserve linkages to schools and peers.

"While racial disparities in kinship stability are urgent and unjust, in Kansas, between 2017 and 2022, children initially placed in kinship care were significantly more likely to have only one placement (82% v. 65%) than those placed with a non-kinship foster home."

Supporting Kinship Caregiving

In addition to profound benefits for children, many kinship caregivers derive deep meaning from the investments they make for the children in their care. However, few kinship caregivers receive the swift, tailored, and equitable support they need to succeed in their challenging role. Research has highlighted kinship caregivers’ needs for additional information about child development, trauma-informed interactions, legal options for guardianship, financial and academic supports, and youth mental health, as well as other services commonly provided to foster parents, such as respite care and peer alliances. Kansas’ KinVest Project is designed to increase collective capacity to support kinship caregivers and their families, align judicial rulings and caseworker decisions with an emphasis on kinship, and emphasize collaborative caregiving models within child welfare practice.

The KinVest Project

In 2020, catalyzed by research demonstrating kinship care’s significant advantages over other out-of-home placements and by demands for policy and practices that preserve family ties, Kansas declared itself a “Kinship First” state. To move toward that vision, the KU School of Social Welfare and the Children’s Alliance of Kansas, along with other key actors in Kansas child welfare, formed Kansas Invests in Families (KinVest) through a federal grant. KinVest is a 5-year initiative that began in October 2021 with formal kinship families focusing on developing a statewide kinship model. KinVest has four interlocking elements informed by evidence about promising interventions to support successful kinship placements:

1. Policy taskforce, to ground system reforms in the lived experiences of parents, youth, and kinship caregivers.

2. Workforce training, to coach child welfare practitioners in collaborating with kinship caregivers and supporting collaborative caregiving approaches.

3. Resource guides, to help kinship caregivers navigate situations they encounter with the children they’re raising.

4. Courageous conversations with courts and other powerful decision-makers, to elevate the opportunities and benefits

of kinship placements and how to more effectively support birth families and kinship connections.

Policy and practice recommendations to advance kinship care in Kansas

With leadership from families, KinVest is changing the culture of child welfare in Kansas, opening workers’ hearts and minds to the benefits of kinship placements, and orienting the system to transformative shared parenting. In some cases, needed policies already exist, but existing procedures, various biases, or competing priorities prevent full implementation. For example, the border agreement developed to facilitate placement with relatives out-of-state is simultaneously a valuable policy innovation and insufficient in practice — its reach constrained by a limited radius and a cumbersome process that can delay placement for months. Steps taken toward a kinship commitment in Kansas are to be celebrated. However, mounting evidence about superior kinship outcomes and ongoing racial inequities in Kansas’ child welfare system — and specifically in kinship — compel further action.

• Prioritize racial equity in ‘kin-first’ child welfare. Kansas’ proclamation as a ‘kin-first state’ included a goal of placing 50% of all children in kinship care. This declaration and its accompanying policy and practice changes made a difference in overall kinship placement rates. However, prominent racial disparities remained. As Figure 1 illustrates, while kinship placement rates increased markedly, the rate for Black children trailed and even dipped in 2022. Further, while kinship placements are more stable than other out-of-home placements, Kansas data reveal that racial disproportionalities persist within kinship placements (Figure 2). These inequities deny children of color the full advantages kinship placements promise. Kansas cannot claim full victory in its kinship innovations until all children have equitable access to kinship placement—and all families have what they need to care for their kin.

More policy and practice recommendations

To align child welfare policy with ‘kin-first culture’, Kansas should assess all our child welfare policies for evidence of bias toward non-kinship foster care—overall, and specifically for children and families of color. In FY2024, ~51% of Kansas children in the child welfare system were placed in kinship care. This is higher than the national average, but lower than in the states with the most success locating and supporting kinship caregivers—and short of our own aspirations. Kansas should reinforce our ‘kin-first’ declaration with official directives that children should be placed with strangers only if all efforts to find and engage relatives and kin are exhausted. Then, we must leverage policy to support kinship caregivers — particularly those who face additional hurdles in their caregiving efforts.               

• We must construct intentional barriers to non-kinship placements. The states with the greatest success in placing children in kinship care not only make the child welfare process smoother for kinship caregivers; they also complicate the process of placing children with strangers. Some states require a ‘kinship exception request’ to place a child with a stranger; others require secondary or advanced review. These technical changes contribute to altering mindsets and disrupting inequitable habits. 
• New federal rules have outlined how states can streamline approval of kinship caregivers for licensure and equitable reimbursement. While Kansas has moved quickly to align our policies to expedite kinship licensure and close the gap in reimbursement rates, there is still more Kansas can do to support kinship caregivers. The licensure path is a complicated process with barriers due to workers’ incomplete knowledge about the new rules and families’ distrust of the system. One barrier is workers’ competence in using the new rule. Kansas should intentionally implement the modified kinship licensing standards by ensuring workers have a clear understanding of their application. Another barrier is the inherent distrust experienced by those involved with the child welfare system. Kansas should authentically engage families to ensure a common goal to maintain kinship connections. 
• Kansas should ensure that kinship caregivers undergo (1) a background check that meets specific criteria, (2) a caregiver suitability assessment, and (3) a safety and needs assessment — not unnecessary requirements that can prevent receipt of needed support. Further, as allowed in federal rules, Kansas should take a broad view of “kin”, making this streamlined process available both to caregivers related by blood and those children identify as ‘family’.
• To ensure that all child welfare policies demonstrate authentic and enthusiastic embrace of kinship, we should target kinship caregivers and their extended families for Family First Prevention Services Act services and bolster Kansas’ Kinship Navigator program — a model demonstrated to close racial gaps in kinship placement. 

Increase funding to make good on the declaration. Insufficient child welfare funding causes large caseloads for workers who then struggle to provide the intensive support that some kinship families require. Sometimes, finding family members who can/will care for children takes creativity and considerable persistence. Further, even after caregivers have been located, the task of family finding should continue, so that all children have a reservoir of viable caregivers and can grow up with the assurance of not only a kinship placement but also emotional, familial, and cultural connections. The Kansas child welfare system needs more than just money, but we do need financial investments that keep our promises to children and their kinship caregivers.

Provide evidence-based training for families and workers. Child welfare workers need focused training that equips them to support kinship caregivers and facilitate healthy collaborative caregiving between birth parents and kinship caregivers. Kinship caregivers need trauma-informed training that amplifies their families’ strengths and supports them in taking on caregiving on top of their own needs — often with little advanced notice. And all adults in the child’s life need ongoing training to successfully shoulder their respective roles. 

Build on the SOUL Family Legal Permanency Option to provide guardianship assistance and other legal aid. Adoption and reunification are not the only paths to permanency, but barriers can complicate the pursuit of other avenues. Lack of legal assistance can prevent kinship caregivers from making their family relationships permanent, resulting in problems both routine (guardianship for school and medical care) and profound (extended period of uncertainty). The SOUL Family Legal Permanency Option, adopted in 2024 by the Kansas Legislature, provides a valuable tool for youth and the adults who support them. It is also a crucial lesson in the advances possible when youths’ needs and goals are centered in child welfare decision making. To build on this progress, Kansas should consider whether the federal Kin-GAP (Guardianship              Assistance Program) may complement SOUL and other ways to support kinship families with the legal and post-permanency services that facilitate long-term positive outcomes. 

While the compassion of strangers is appreciated, children need their families. When relatives and kin step forward to provide not only affection but also extensive and sustained care, these caregivers deserve respect and support. They should be regarded as key resources for crafting and evaluating child welfare system responses. To honor and protect family bonds and give children the best chance at a thriving life, Kansas must make good on our vow to be ‘Kinship First’.

References

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iii. Berger LM, et al. (2009). Estimating the “impact” of out-of-home placement on child well-being: approaching the problem of selection bias. Child Development; 80(6):1856-76; Rubin, D. M., et al. (2008). Impact of kinship care on behavioral well-being for children in out-of-home care. Archives of pediatrics & adolescent medicine, 162(6), 550–556. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpedi.162.6.550; Swanke, J. R., Yampolskaya, S., Strozier, A., & Armstrong, M. I. (2016). Mental Health Service utilization and time to care: A comparison of children in traditional foster care and children in kinship care. Children and Youth Services Review, 68, 154–158. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2016.06.029 

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xix. Administration for Children & Families. (2023, February 14). New Proposed Rule Changing the Foster Care Licensing Regulation Supports Keeping Families Safely Together through Kinship Care. Available from: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/02/14/2023-03005/separat…

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xxiii. Children’s Alliance of Kansas. (2024). A proposed permanency option designed by youth in foster care. Available from: https://www.childally.org/soul-family.

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Kansas Invests in Families (KinVest) is funded by the Children’s Bureau, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, under grant number 90-CW-1150. The brief’s contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Children’s Bureau.

Citations

Lewis, M., Gulledge, E., Miller, B., Harsch, K., McArthur, V., Jager, S., & Akin, B. A. (2024). For Better Child Welfare Outcomes, Always Family First.