November 2012Vol. 13, No. 10Kinship Care and Fostering Connections
The National Resource Center for Permanency and Family Connections (NRCPFC) published an information packet about how the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 places emphasis on and specifies provisions for the support of kinship care. The brief highlights kinship care as a valuable option for promoting permanency and improved outcomes for children in foster care.
According to the information packet, kinship care has increasingly become the placement option of choice for child welfare agencies because of factors such as a lack of available nonrelative foster parents, an increase in the number of children in need of foster care, and the benefits of kinship care over other forms of nonrelative placements. Children who are placed with family members instead of with nonrelative foster caregivers tend to have more stable experiences and fewer placements. They also are more likely to have frequent contact with their birth parents and siblings, experience fewer disruptions to their daily lives (e.g., changing schools), and generally tend to respond more positively to their placement, exhibiting fewer negative behaviors and feeling more loved and at home.
Some of the ways in which the Fostering Connections Act of 2008 supports kinship care and relative caregivers include:
- Federal reimbursements for guardianship assistance payments
- More flexible foster care licensing regulations for relatives
- Required notification of families when a relative child is being placed in foster care
- Family connections grants
Information Packet: Kinship Care and the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 is available on NRCPFC's website:
