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Kinship caregivers play a crucial role in supporting reunification for children in foster care. But when that is not possible, kin can provide a safe, permanent home for young people to exit the system.

Legal professionals can help facilitate successful permanency by:

• Engaging kin from the beginning of a case;
• Advocating for placement with prospective kin caregivers;
• Helping kin make informed decisions about their permanency options; and
• Ensuring caregivers have the support they need.

Advocate for Identification and Placement with Kin

Permanency with kin starts with identifying and immediately placing children with kin. Attorneys can assist with identifying and engaging with kin from the start of the case, and should involve children, parents, and relatives in those efforts. Courts must ensure that agencies adhere to federal law, which requires them to find and notify relatives within 30 days of a child being placed in foster care to facilitate timely evaluation of and support for potential kin placements and family supports. Early identification of kin also helps avoid situations in which courts must choose between maintaining placement stability and placing a child with kin.

Legal professionals should advocate for, and courts should ensure, that children are placed with kin first, when it is in their best interests. However, when placement with kin is not initially feasible, attorneys can ask the court to require continued family engagement, timely home assessments, and concrete steps to remove unnecessary barriers to kin placement.

Ensure Kin Understand Legal Care and Custody Options

It is crucial for kin caregivers to understand the legal, practical, and long-term implications of the care and custody options available to them. These may include pursuing guardianship, legal custody, power of attorney, or adoption. Placement can be an overwhelming experience for kin, who often do not anticipate becoming caregivers and are suddenly required to navigate multiple bureaucratic systems that affect both their family relationships and financial stability.

At the time of placement, kin caregivers may not receive a clear explanation of their options, or it may be difficult to fully absorb that complex information during a single conversation. As a result, kin caregivers often benefit from ongoing communication and repeated opportunities to learn about and revisit the choices available to them. Additionally, kin caregivers may not be aware that there are permanency alternatives beyond adoption that do not require termination of parental rights and may better fit their preferred family dynamics.

Legal professionals should help ensure that kin caregivers understand the impact of their decision. This is not a one-time checkbox. It requires ongoing engagement, as circumstances may change so that what was once supposed to be a temporary arrangement with a kin caregiver could become permanent if reunification is not possible. Resources such as the ABA Center on Children and the Law, Children’s Defense Fund, and Generation United’s Kinship Caregiving Options brief and state-specific comparison charts can be helpful reference points.

Finally, court orders should discuss and clearly define the rights and responsibilities of the kin caregiver and those retained by the parents and include detailed visitation and contact plans and criteria for modification.

Promoting Ongoing Support for Kinship Families

Successful permanency requires that kin caregivers have the assistance they need to support the child or children in their care. Many kinship caregivers take on this responsibility unexpectedly and may need help with the financial burden of raising a child, as well as meeting the child’s health, educational, behavioral, and emotional needs. Legal professionals can strengthen permanency outcomes by helping families identify supports early, addressing barriers before final orders are entered, and ensuring caregivers know where to turn after the court case ends.

When pursuing permanency with kin, attorneys should advocate for the provision of robust post-permanency support. These supports are necessary to ensure that caregivers don’t lose access to needed assistance and and stay connected to needed resources through kinship navigator programs, peer support groups, and other forms of community engagement.

Being placed into foster care is disruptive and destabilizing for children. Kin caregivers can ease that adjustment by keeping children in a familiar, loving, and supportive environment. However, kin typically don’t expect to become full-time caregivers and must navigate obstacles to becoming permanent homes for children. Legal professionals have an important role to play in ensuring that kinship caregivers have the knowledge, support, and advocacy they need to overcome those obstacles.

For a deeper dive, the Kinship Legal Toolkit, created by the ABA Center on Children and the Law with grant funding from the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, contains best practices, videos, and links to additional resources about this topic.  

Steven Jessen-Howard is a Staff Attorney at the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law.