On Their Own Terms:  Supporting Kinship Care Outside of TANF and Foster Care

Chapter VIII:
Policy Implications

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Contents

• Implications for Child Welfare Policy Makers
• Implications for TANF
• Implications for Other Public Agency Policy Makers
• Implications for Future Research

Endnotes

To date, child welfare agencies appear to have taken the lead in the development of alternative kinship care programs. This study highlights a number of issues that child welfare policy makers must consider in designing approaches to serving kinship care families. In addition, the study identifies strategies for TANF and other public agencies to become more involved in identifying and serving kinship care families.

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Implications for Child Welfare Policy Makers

Regardless of when and how states choose to use kinship caregivers, child welfare policy makers must understand that kinship care is a unique phenomenon that touches all parts of the child welfare system.

• Child abuse and neglect reporting:  Reports of abuse and neglect are often made by kin. Sometimes these are unfounded reports motivated by a custody dispute, but often they are reports from relatives who are truly concerned about the well being of a related child. Child welfare agencies have a choice in how they respond to reports of abuse and neglect filed by relatives, especially when kin who are already caring for a related child seek out child welfare assistance. Many kinship caregivers noted that they were caring for children as a result of abuse and neglect but were denied alternative kinship care services because the child welfare agency was not responsible for placing the child. These kin felt they were wrongfully punished for stepping in on behalf of a child before the child welfare agency.

  Policy makers have also argued that the existing framework for financing and supporting kinship care may unintentionally give caregivers incentives to enter the already over-burdened child welfare system. Because kin are eligible for TANF child-only payments regardless of their income or work participation, many have questioned whether parents may relinquish the care of their children to kin so that kin receive the TANF child-only payments. At the same time, foster care payments are so much higher than TANF child-only payments that kin may be able to get greater financial support and access to services by inviting child welfare involvement.

  Recent changes to federal child welfare policy⁽²⁵⁾ allow a state to seek federal reimbursement when it takes legal custody of a child who was already in kinship care. The state would then be able to offer the kin caregiver a foster care payment. If kin have a significant financial incentive to enter the child welfare system, some fear that such "paper removals" could significantly increase the kinship foster care population. Moreover, it may be very difficult for child welfare agencies to determine whether or not a private kinship care arrangement was the result of abuse or neglect.

• Using kin to prevent removal from the birth parent's home:  Few of the alternative kinship care programs identified seek to reunify children in kinship care with their birth parents. It appears that many of the alternative programs are focused on intervening when it has already been determined that the likelihood of reunification is slim. At the same time, many child welfare agencies are seeking strategies to use kin as a resource to prevent the removal of children from their parents' homes. For example, at least 25 states are implementing Family Group Decision Making models to involve extended family members in developing and carrying out service plans. In some states, child welfare agencies are placing children with kin but allowing birth parents to live with the kin as well. Such arrangements can reduce the trauma children experience and kin can model good parenting practices.
• Using kin as foster parents: While experts and policy makers generally agree that children who cannot live with their parents can benefit from being cared for by relatives, there is still widespread debate as to when kin should be used as foster parents and how they should be financially compensated when they are. Questions have been raised about the safety of kinship care, whether kin should receive the same payments as non-kin foster parents, and the unintended incentives created by providing foster care payments to kin.

  Are kinship care arrangements safe for children? Some argue that "the apple does not fall far from the tree" and question whether the grandparents who raised abusive children are abusive themselves. Most kinship care arrangements, however, result from parental neglect. While some evidence suggests that abuse may be intergenerational, there is no evidence to suggest that neglect is intergenerational. At the same time, both neglect and kinship care are often linked to substance abuse which has been shown to have intergenerational aspects. Experts and policy makers also question whether kin may have difficulty controlling children's contact with their parents, which could place children at risk of ongoing abuse.

  Some contend that it is inappropriate for relatives to receive money, particularly foster care payments for what is seen as a familial duty ¾caring for a family member in a time of need. Others argue, however, that the basic needs of abused and neglected children are the same, irrespective of the relationship to the caregiver, and that the government has a responsibility to ensure that these needs are met.

  If child welfare agencies are going to continue to use kin as foster parents they need to acknowledge their fundamental differences from non-kin and respond accordingly. For example, non-kin foster parents are already licensed when they first receive a child. They are informed of their responsibilities and the role of the child welfare agency. They have voluntarily and with foresight agreed to become foster parents. They may also get support (both emotional and technical) from a local foster parent association. In contrast, kin generally are not licensed as foster parents when they are thrust into their new caregiving role. Unless they have acted as a foster parent in the past, they likely have little or no knowledge about what their role is and how child welfare workers can assist them. Kin may even fear contact with the child welfare system and/or resent their involvement. Kin are also unlikely to participate in foster parent associations.

  These differences suggest the need for alternative service delivery approaches for kin. States can provisionally license kin while they are meeting full licensing requirements.⁽²⁶⁾ States can design specialized training and/or orientation sessions for kin. Child welfare agencies can organize support groups specifically for kinship caregivers. Because kin are less likely to request assistance from child welfare agencies, workers may need to be more persistent in offering supports. Child welfare agencies may need to explore alternative service delivery approaches that are less threatening to kin, approaches that make kin more comfortable requesting and accepting assistance. Training is vital to the new service delivery approach. Many child welfare workers have misconceptions about kinship care and some have personal beliefs about how kin should be supported that may contradict agency policy or guidance.

• Achieving permanency for kinship care children:  With the focus on permanency planning amplified by ASFA, it is not surprising that many alternative kinship care programs focus on helping kin who want to make a permanent commitment to care for a related child. Some have argued that once kin begin receiving foster care payments, they may be less likely to take permanent custody of related children because ongoing financial support from child welfare is often contingent on adoption,⁽²⁷⁾ something many kin are unwilling to do. Likewise, because foster care payments are considerably more than what a poor parent can get through TANF, some have argued that foster care payments may provide a disincentive to reunification with a child's parent. Moreover, some have suggested that birth parents may feel less urgency for reunification when relatives care for their children since the birth parents can visit their children whenever they want.

  At the federal level, the policy debate has focused on whether the federal government should treat guardianship arrangements like adoption by allowing states to claim reimbursement under title IV-E for such arrangements. In the Report to Congress on Kinship Care, the Secretary of HHS noted that more information was needed about the long-term outcomes of subsidized guardianship, before the federal government could adequately assess whether they should be supported. However, more than half the states have moved forward with subsidized guardianship programs and many receive federal funds (under title IV-E through waivers, TANF, or the Social Services Block Grant). Expanding title IV-E to provide an open-ended entitlement for subsidized guardianship could result in significant cost shifting. Moreover, as adoption provides eligibility for a host of other programs, changes to federal policy on guardianship in child welfare may have a broader impact.

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Implications for TANF

The upcoming reauthorization of TANF in late 2002 sets the stage for policymakers to assess key policies and provisions embodied in the current welfare reform legislation. This assessment will need to consider the changing composition and needs of the TANF population and low-income families. Families receiving child-only grants, many of whom are relatives caring for children, now comprise a significant share (29 percent) of the total TANF caseload. Whereas reducing welfare dependency among single mothers with children has been a prime focus of past welfare reform efforts, TANF reauthorization provides an important opportunity to develop policies which better address and respond to families receiving or eligible for child-only grants.

TANF agencies are just now beginning to consider how the flexibility of the TANF block grant could better serve kinship care families that have traditionally been served through the child welfare system or the TANF system. They can be used to fund additional payments and services for child-only cases or they can be used to fund alternative programs for kinship families involved in the child welfare system. Better coordination between TANF and child welfare programs could help ensure that staff and financial resources from both programs are leveraged and used most appropriately in serving kinship care families.

TANF policymakers may also want to consider service delivery approaches that reduce the stigma of welfare for kinship caregivers. This includes strategies such as creating a separate office for handling kinship care cases or allowing kin to apply by mail or by phone. A simple name change, from "welfare" to something that suggests that government is thanking kin for taking on the responsibility of caring for a related child, could remove the "hand out" connotation that many kinship care families dislike.

At the state level, policymakers may also want to consider two technical changes. The first would be to broaden the definition of "kin." Under AFDC, the federal government defined rather narrowly which relatives could receive child-only AFDC payments. Under TANF, states define "relative caregiver." As a result, many kin are not eligible to receive TANF because they are not closely related, if related at all, to the children they care for. And in many states, the child welfare agency will place a child with such kin but will not necessarily license them, excluding them from foster care payment eligibility. If they do not meet the strict definition of relative under TANF, they could in fact be caring for a child in state custody and not be eligible to receive any ongoing payment.

The second technical change would affect child support enforcement policy. Child support cooperation requirements may place kin caregivers in a difficult position. They may choose not to apply or comply with cooperation requirements out of fear that the birth parents will take their children back if they were forced to pay child support. States may want to examine their good cause exceptions and make sure they can be applied under certain circumstances for TANF child-only cases.

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Implications for Other Public Agency Policy Makers

Almost all public agencies could play an important role in serving kinship care families, given the wide range of documented service needs. The implications from this study on schools, aging offices, and the family courts are highlighted below.

• The public schools.  As one of the few public agencies that come into contact with all school-aged children, schools can play an essential role in identifying kinship caregivers that may need assistance. As one grandparent said in a focus group meeting, "just stand outside one of our elementary schools at the end of the day and see how many children are being picked up by people with gray hair." Schools may want to target mentoring and tutoring services to kinship care children, since kinship caregivers may have difficulty helping related children with school assignments. In addition, many kin report having difficulty either enrolling children in schools or enrolling them in specialized classes when they did not have written documentation to prove they were a child's custodian. Schools may want to reconsider their enrollment policies or provide more technical assistance to kin in how to meet regulations. Schools may also want to consider allowing kin caregivers to leave related children in the schools they were in when they lived with their birth parents even if the kin does not live in the same school district.
• Aging offices.  Kinship caregivers may be more likely to access services from an aging office than a TANF or child welfare agency, because they feel that the aging offices were set up specifically to meet their needs. As such, aging offices can play an important role in bringing kin together and identifying supports to meet caregivers' needs. Moreover, for the first time, recent reauthorization of the federal Older Americans Act provides states with funds to support older caregivers rearing related children.
• The courts.  The courts are responsible for monitoring the progress of all children placed in kinship foster care. As such, the courts have the opportunity to assess whether child welfare agencies are adequately addressing the needs of this population. Additional training for family court judges specific to ASFA as well as on kinship foster care generally may be needed. Some program administrators questioned whether family court judges understand ASFA exceptions that relate to termination of parental rights and permanency outcomes for related children. Some also noted that judges threatened to remove children from kinship caregiver homes when kin were reluctant to adopt.

  In addition, courts may want to consider strategies to better inform kin of their options and rights and/or to assist them in accessing pro bono legal assistance. Courts are responsible for making custodial decisions, so they have contact with many kinship care families that have had no contact with child welfare agencies. In some states, custody hearings are held in probate court, in others in family court, and in others custody decisions may fall under the jurisdiction of more than one court. One of the major barriers that kin identified to obtaining permanent custody or adoption of related children were the costs associated with the legal and court fees as well as simple confusion over the legal process.

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Implications for Future Research

This study was largely exploratory, documenting a relatively new service delivery approach for a very specific population. As such, the study raises more questions than it answers. In order to ensure informed program development, policy makers need considerably more information about the kinship care population and their services.

• Child welfare kinship care practices.  Over the past few years, researchers have documented federal and state policies affecting kinship care, but much less is known about local kinship foster care practices. Researchers need to document, compare and assess the approaches that child welfare agencies are using to serve kinship care families. New research should include more detailed information, especially outcome data, about commonly implemented models such as family group decision-making and subsidized guardianship. It should also include information about how states and local courts are interpreting and implementing ASFA guidelines as they relate to kin.
• TANF Child-only grants.  TANF program administrators need much more information about child-only cases if they choose to broaden their priorities and service strategies to include a more holistic and family-centered approach. There is a striking lack of research and information on child-only cases, even though such cases represent a significant share of the TANF caseload. There is little known about such families' characteristics, their economic circumstances, their use of TANF, or their involvement and interaction with child welfare and other programs. In addition, there has been little research on the state variation in the share of child-only cases and kinship care families receiving child-only grants.
• Other supports for private kin.  While this study focused on child welfare and TANF clients, kinship care families may come into contact with a wide range of public agencies. It is important to document how other systems address the needs of kin including agencies that provide child care, education, housing, health, mental health, and legal services.

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Endnotes

25 Final rule implementing the Adoption and Safe Families Act, published in the Federal Register, January 25, 2000.

26.Although states cannot claim federal reimbursement for foster care payments made to provisionally licensed kin.

27. Most, but not all, kin are eligible to receive an ongoing adoption assistance payment that is typically at the level of a foster care payment.

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Last updated:  10/29/01