Kinship Care Bill

When children are removed from their parents' home, their world is turned upside down and they suffer physiologically and emotionally. They may lash out in words or behaviors, then become despondent and hopeless, and finally, detach themselves emotionally to cope with their significant loss. Their healthy development and ability to adjust normally to losses throughout life may be compromised. When relatives are available to provide a support network, the blow is softened. Familiar faces and surroundings they know and trust will comfort them. Relatives provide homes for the vast majority of kids whose parents can no longer care for them, caring for some 2.5 million children and saving taxpayers an estimated $6.5 billion a year in child welfare costs (Vestal, C. 2006). Kinship care is the full time care, nurturing and protection of children by relatives, members of their tribes or clans, godparents, stepparents, or any adult who has a kinship bond with a child (Children's Defense Fund, 2000). Officials say that without kin to provide care, the soaring number of children left behind by parents suffering from drug addictions, domestic violence, incarcerations, AIDS and military duty would choke already-clogged child welfare systems. Despite the value of children remaining with their extended families, there are many reasons why relatives may be unwilling to take on the responsibility of a child. Some just cannot afford another mouth to feed and financial assistance varies from state to state. Many children in kinship foster care may not be receiving the services they need. Senate bill number 585 (sb585), is a bill introduced to amend the Code of Virginia relating to kinship care, proposing that all children who are placed in kinship care and their care givers would have access to all foster care services, regardless of licensing. If foster care services were more readily available to children in the care of kin, hardships would be significantly reduced.

In the 1980s, child welfare agencies began to turn to kinship caregivers to act as foster parents for abused or neglected children. Each state defines "relative" differently, including relatives through blood, marriage, or adoption ranging from the first to the fifth degree. Generally, preference is given to the child's grandparents, followed by aunts, uncles, adult siblings, and cousins. State use of kinship care continued to increase rapidly through the 1980's and into the early 1990's, but the federal government and state legislatures have had a difficult time responding to the phenomenon. There is much debate about how to use kin most effectively and to what extent they should be treated differently compared to non-kin foster parents. Questions like how kin who act as foster parents should be financially assisted, assessed as caregivers, and how child welfare agencies should approach permanency planning when children are placed with kin remain up for interpretation. Some argue that kin have a familial responsibility and should not be paid while others contend that foster care payment rates provide an incentive for private kinship caregivers to become part of the child welfare system, yet, others argue that it is the government's responsibility to support these children, regardless of who is caring for them (Jantz, A., Geen, R., et.al., 2002).

When the Adoption and Child Welfare Act of 1980 was passed, forming the basis of the federal foster care law, it was almost unheard of for a child's relative to act as a foster parent. But between 1986 and 1990 the proportion of children in state-supported kinship care increased from 18 to 31 percent (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2005). This growth forced policy makers to take note of kinship care. Child welfare policies and services are generally directed to children in state custody, and most children in kinship foster care are not in state custody. However, it was the 1996 welfare reform act that officially encouraged states to give relatives first priority in providing care for foster children.

Unless relatives have legal custody of the children, they often face problems accessing services with their less-than-parents status. The federal government will not reimburse states for foster care payments made to kin who are not licensed the same as non-relative foster homes so the financial support that states provide to kinship foster parents is directly tied to how kin are licensed. Each state can differ in three primary ways: who they consider eligible caregivers, how they license or approve family members for care giving, and how they support kinship families within the child welfare system. States' kinship foster care licensing policies have changed significantly since the passage of the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act, 27 states altered their licensing policies between 1999 and 2001 (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2004). Some states have a separate, less stringent licensing process for kin than they have for non-kin. Twenty-three states apply non-kin foster care licensing standards to kin, but may waive or modify one or more standards that all non-kin foster parents are required to meet, the most common being space (Jantz, A., Geen, R., et.al., 2002).

Kinship foster care policy is continually evolving at both the federal and state level, potentially affecting millions of foster children who are in the care of kin. Child welfare experts believe that more families would take in their relatives' children if they were aware of services available to them. Children in kinship foster care are more than twice as likely as children living with non-kin foster parents to live in families with incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty thresholds (Macomber, J., & Geen, R., 2003). Services kinship care families may not be receiving include Medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance, and childcare vouchers.

These financial hardships have a debilitating effect on the child as well as kinship care providers. Instead of a quiet retirement, sweetened by delights of occasional visits with grandchildren, many grandparents have taken on the role of surrogate parents to their grandchildren. The effect of parental responsibility on psychological functioning is explained by three main factors: (1) the trauma in the parents' family that precipitates a surrogate parenting role for the grandparents; (2) the expectations many grandparents may have had for their children that have been dashed by divorce, addictions, or similar problems leading to the parent being unable to parent; and (3) the intrusion of parenting on the lives of older persons at a time when they were most likely facing and resolving developmental issues of their own (Glass, J., & Huneycutt, T., 2002).

Many states are taking steps to better cater to the needs of kinship foster care families.