According to the Child Welfare League of America, "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."
Parental substance abuse
HIV/AIDS
Parental incarceration
Teenage parents not ready to be parents
Homicide related to
Mental illness
Kinship care is a strategy for family preservation and enables children
to live with people they know and trust.
Supports the transmition of children’s family identity
Enables children to continue family relationships
Focuses on strengths on family system rather than deficits
Lessens the trauma of family separation
Offers growth and development within the context of a child’s culture
and community
Many states have justified kinship preference as meeting the "least
restrictive"
guidelines of PL 96-272
Financial
Legal
Inconsistency of programs
Availability of community-based services/resources
Access to services such as:
Transportation
Respite Care
Childcare
Support Groups
Counseling
Advocacy
The Kinship Care Warmline is a statewide, toll-free line that provides a listening ear and information and referral services for grandparents and other relatives raising children.
More than 31% of all children in state custody are placed with extended
family members.
Approximately 3.5 million children in the US live in the home of a
grandparent or other relative.
Approximately 231,000 children in Florida live with relatives.
Forty-four percent of these relative caregivers are raising children due
to parental substance abuse.
Roughly two-thirds of kinship caregivers are the child's grandparent.
