A selection of The Imprint’s most impactful stories from the past year
Child welfare systems increasingly rely on relatives and other kinship caregivers to step in when investigators and courts feel a child cannot remain in their home. In 2024, The Imprint explored the state of kinship care in several aspects.
Reporter Steven Yoder dove deep on New York’s kinship care practices. Six years ago the state set a goal of keeping half of youth in foster care with kin; Yoder’s look at the numbers in dozens of New York counties shows that the goal has not yet been reached, though several local systems are involving kin at a rate well above 50%. Part two of Yoder’s series examines more closely what those counties are doing to achieve those rates.
Yesterday, we featured Imprint reporting on the continuous drop in the number of youth who are in foster care. Less is known about trends in the use of “hidden foster care,” a practice that generally entails child protection agencies diverting children to the homes of relatives or family friends without formally seeking to remove legal custody from a parent or guardian. Two U.S. senators got the ball rolling this year on legislation that would require states to start tracking, and reporting on, how often this practice is used.
The Biden administration finalized new rules for licensing and financially supporting kin toward the end of 2023. On The Imprint Weekly Podcast, we talked to experts Ana Beltran and Marina Nitze this year about efforts to maximize states’ use of the new federal rules.
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