Kinship care gives children loving homes

When it comes to foster care, children do better when they live with and are cared for by an adult they already know and trust. This type of care, called kinship care, could be provided by a relative or other adult in the child's life, such as a coach, teacher or neighbor.

"One study explored the benefits of keeping children in their existing community," said Ashley Ross, area director at the Children's Home Society of North Carolina. "Another showed children in kinship care had fewer behavioral problems three years after placement than children placed into traditional foster care."

At Children's Home Society, professionals like Ross specialize in education and prevention programs, family preservation, and adoption and foster care, with the end goal of helping every child find a permanent, safe, and loving family.

Recent legislative changes support kinship care as an alternative to traditional foster care, formally recognizing a system that has been in place longer than foster care. After all, families and loved ones have long cared for children when parents couldn't. Formalizing kinship care means the state and foster care system can be involved, and kinship care providers can be licensed.

Whether formal or informal, kinship care leads to more positive mental health and behavioral outcomes than when a child is in foster care.

When children experience neglect, abuse or unsafe living conditions, they may end up with relatives or in the foster care system.

"The same factors that contribute to the disruption of a family experiencing traditional foster care would bring a child into kinship care," said Ross.

Kinship care is usually the first choice when placing children. Placing children with someone who is already familiar to them helps to maintain a sense of normalcy and familiarity.

"A kin-first approach exhausts all relative options before considering a stranger or traditional foster care options," said Ross.

Because any major family disruption creates risk, kinship care aims to minimize the risk of children losing their culture and identity or their familiar school and community environments.

Keeping children with their parents is the first goal in any situation. The Family Preservation program offered by the Children's Home Society helps empower families to navigate crises and stay together.

"Services are delivered to families in their own homes and communities, at times that are most convenient for them," said Ross. "Our specialists utilize these in-home services to build connections and support systems that enable the family and the child to thrive."

As for kinship care providers, there are grandparent support groups, and Children's Home Society offers a free kinship caregiver support group called Caring For Our Own.

No matter what a family looks like, whether caregivers are biological parents, kinship caregivers or anyone else, strengthening families strengthens the community, said Ross.

"The dollars designated today toward prevention and support are an investment into the lives of generations to come," said Ross.

A mindset shift is also necessary to get away from the idea that families need to be perfect in order to be functional. At Children's Home Society, parents and caregivers can participate in a number of classes and programs to address their struggles and questions.

"You cannot be something you have never seen before," said Ross. "We use this ideology with kids as we ask what they want to be when they grow up, but we should also consider this framework for families. There are families who have only experienced hardship, addiction, neglect and, as a society and child welfare system, we are expecting model parent behavior when it may be something they, as children, never had the opportunity to experience."