Kin-First Courtrooms: Kinship Resources

The Importance of Kinship

Benefits of Kinship Placement

American Bar Association

Summary
This publication is a tool for lawyers that can be used when writing briefs or making oral arguments to the court in support of kinship placements. It includes research and cites that focus on the benefits of children being placed with relatives, including better outcomes in their mental health, reduced trauma, fewer behavior problems, better social outcomes, better educational stability and greater placement stability and permanency.

Every Kid Needs a Family Policy Report

Annie E. Casey Foundation

Summary
This publication tracks state-by-state the status of children in the United States. By providing policymakers and citizens with benchmarks of child wellbeing, KIDS COUNT seeks to enrich local, state and national discussions concerning ways to secure better futures for all children.

Every Kid Needs a Family: Attorney Advocacy Guide

Annie E. Casey Foundation

Summary
This publication is a companion document to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Giving Children in the Child Welfare System the Best Chance for Success, Kids Count policy report, May 2015. It provides a framework for attorneys’ advocacy efforts to keep youth in families and family settings and includes multi-disciplinary research and other resources and guides to draw on best practices for professionals in the child welfare field.

Kinship Caregivers in the Child Welfare System

HHS Administration for Children & Families

Summary
This brief provides insight into how kinship caregivers help preserve family ties and provide children with a sense of family support, and how kinship care also saves society more than $6.5 billion each year in formal foster care costs. The study seeks to determine the needs of these kinship caregivers and how policy and practice can help meet their financial and other needs.

The Urgency of Placement with Relatives

National Association of Council for Children

Summary
This article includes the urgency of placing with relatives, a state-by-state comparison of relative placements, and strategies court systems can use to increase relative placements. It highlights the notion that best practice includes engaging relatives at the investigation process before the actual removal occurs. Further, judges must be prepared to hold the agency accountable for using due diligence in identifying and engaging relatives, and to insist that social worker reports contain information about relatives the social worker has contacted and their responses. Judges should inquire of social workers if they used family finding to locate and notice any absent parent and relatives and to use the ‘reasonable efforts’ finding/order to prevent removal and facilitate reunification.

Placement of Children with Relatives

HHS Administration for Children and Families

Summary
When a child is removed from their home and placed in out-of-home care, relatives are the preferred resource because this placement type maintains family connections and cultural traditions that can minimize the trauma of family separation. Federal law under title IV-E of the Social Security Act requires that State agencies consider giving preference to a relative to receive Federal payments for foster care and adoption assistance.

Bringing Kinship Care Out of the Shadows

Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago

Summary
Kinship diversion care is sometimes described as “hidden foster care” because it is complex and often operates outside the boundaries of the foster care system. The child welfare practice of asking parents to agree to their children living with kin outside of foster care is not well studied, though most experts believe it takes place in almost every jurisdiction. Kinship foster care is viewed as best practice because evidence shows that children fare better being with kin or fictive kin (close family friends) when they cannot safely remain with their parent(s).

Sibling Relationships are Sacred: Benefits of Sibling Placement and Contact

American Bar Association

Summary
Evidence shows children who can't safely remain with their parents do better with kin than with strangers in the foster care system.  Despite kinship care benefits, kinship families outside the child welfare system face unique challenges like being ineligible for crucial financial supports and resources available to certified foster families. Our systems can do much more to ensure the well-being of kinship families.

Building KinFirst Culture

Creating a Kin-First Culture

American Bar Association

Summary
This publication highlights that placement with relatives and close family friends is a child welfare priority when children are removed from their parents. It further presents a 7-step process to create a kin-first culture which includes roles for leaders as well as a guide for judges to build a kin-first courtroom.

Kin Promising Practices

Generations United and ABA Center on Children and the Law

Summary
This publication highlights the shift of federal law, policy and practice toward a kin-first culture that consistently promotes immediate kinship placements, helps children maintain connections with kin, and tailors services and supports for kinship families. This technical assistance brief compiles promising kinship practices from across the country and includes seven main topics: identification, notice and engagement of kin; placement with kin, licensing, financial assistance and general support for kin as well as permanency with kin.

Partnering with Relatives to Promote Reunification

The Children's Bureau

Summary
This factsheet shares the experiences and advice of families who have had relatives in kinship care to highlight the dynamics and steps that can support reunification. It further highlights that placing children with relatives helps to maintain family connections and cultural traditions that can minimize the trauma of family separation and relieve the anxieties that come with traditional foster placement.

Judges’ Roles in Promoting Youth-Centered Legal Permanency

NCFJCJ

Summary
This publication defines youth-centered legal permanency, highlights how these permanency options are changing to be more youth-centered, explains how judges can support this youth-centered permanency, includes the brains science research as it relates to permanency for youth, and includes additional resources on youth-centered legal permanency. This publication was developed in consultation with youth and emphasizes that permanency options are shifting to focus more emphasis on kin-based placements and supportive connections with siblings and relatives.

Kin First Judicial Tip Sheet

Grandfamilies

Summary
This tip sheet provides info on the importance of kin, identifying and engaging kin, the role of courts, and licensing considerations

Special Focus: Kinship Care

American Bar Association

Summary
This publication includes multiple articles on the benefits of kinship, practical advice including tips for lawyers and judges, as well as law and policy updates, practice tools and cases.

Recruiting and Supporting Kinship Foster Families

American Bar Association

Summary
Across the country, state child welfare agencies increasingly rely on grandparents, relatives, and close family friends to become foster families to abused and neglected children. The most recent data show that more than one in four children involved in the child welfare system – approximately 104,000 children – are in foster care placements with relatives. While these kinship foster families step up every day to provide critical love and care for the children who need them, they face a range of challenges as foster parents and family members.

Creating a Kin First Culture

WikiHow (from Generations United)

Summary
This wikiHow draws on wisdom from the fi eld about the seven steps to creating a kin fi rst culture – one in which child welfare systems consistently promote kinship placement, help children in foster care maintain connections with their family, and tailor services and supports to the needs of kinship foster families.

Legally Recognizing Fictive Kin Relationships: A Call for Action

American Bar Association

Summary
Despite the prevalence of kinship care arrangements both in and outside of the foster care system, there are many contexts in which the law does not recognize fictive kin relationships. A fictive kin relationship is one that a child has with “an individual who is not related by birth, adoption, or marriage to a child, but who has an emotionally significant relationship with the child.”[3] Not legally recognizing these relationships harms children involved in the child welfare system by preventing their placement with people who can most effectively care for them. Many children have bonds with family friends that are just as strong as those others have with blood relatives. Therefore, placing these children with the people who can best care for them requires laws that treat fictive kin the same as relatives.

The Need to Redefine the Best Interest of the Child

David Kelly and Jerry Milner, Family Integrity and Justice Quarterly

Summary
The phrase best interest(s) of the child is prevalent in child welfare law and practice. It is a legal standard on which attorneys root arguments and a basis of judicial determinations. It is used to guide social work practice and expert recommendations for what should happen to a child. Best interest(s) are utilized in our current system so often to justify so many things that they fail to carry true meaning, which can and does cause harm to children and their parents. We must reexamine this longstanding feature of the child welfare system and define its meaning more explicitly and completely or jettison it altogether.

Kinship Matters: Reflections from the Bench

Judge Edwina Richardson Mendelson

Summary
The New York State court system’s celebration of Reunification Month this June served as a great reminder to us that family preservation is, in fact, the law and that removing a child from their parent or primary caregiver must be reserved for the most extreme and egregious of threats to a child’s safety and wellbeing. We know, however, that there are times when a parent is unable to safely care for a child, even with supportive resources. In those instances, every effort should be made to have the child live with relatives and keep them connected with their family.

Creating a Strong Legal Preference for Kinship Care

Josh Gupta-Kagan, Family Integrity and Justice Quarterly

Summary
This publication defines youth-centered legal permanency, highlights how these permanency options are changing to be more youth-centered, explains how judges can support this youth-centered permanency, includes the brains science research as it relates to permanency for youth, and includes additional resources on youth-centered legal permanency. This publication was developed in consultation with youth and emphasizes that permanency options are shifting to focus more emphasis on kin-based placements and supportive connections with siblings and relatives.

Family Is in a Child's Best Interest

Amelia S. Watson, Family Integrity and Justice Quarterly

Summary
This brief provides insight into how kinship caregivers help preserve family ties and provides children with a sense of family support and how their care also saves society more than $6.5 billion each year in formal foster care costs. The study seeks to determine the needs of these kinship care providers and how policy and practice can help meet these financial and other needs.

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Sign up here to receive e-mail updates about this project and even join a committee if you'd like. If you have any questions, please contact Alyse Almadani at alyse.almadani@kinnectohio.org.