Usage of federal funds to keep foster youth with relatives and other kin has soared in the past decade, according to initial survey results released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation this month.
The foundation surveyed all 50 states to learn more about patterns and practices in regard to kinship care, on which states have increasingly come to rely on when children are removed from their home. The final product, Family Ties — as a child of the 80s, Youth Services Insider appreciates the sitcom reference — will be a series of issue briefs that analyze the responses they received from 46 states, along with other research.
The foundation put out some of its topline findings already, and the piece that YSI had failed to notice in federal spending reports is the surge in federal Kinship Guardianship Assistance Payments, frequently referred to as Kin-GAP.
These payments were created as part of the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act back in 2008, and it offers federal funds for an alternative path to permanency. Born out of experiments in Illinois and Maryland researched by Mark Testa and others, Kin-GAP allows states to pay relatives who are committed to long-term care of their loved ones, similar to how adoptive families can draw an adoption subsidy.
There was little uptake on Kin-GAP in the early years after Fostering Connections; that was followed by steady growth in the number of states that had a plan for their use, but did not draw upon the option much.
But recent IV-E spending data featured in the report suggests there’s been a sharp uptick of late. States claimed about $11 million for Kin-GAP in 2010, and in 2020, $203 million went out the door for these payments. In that decade, the percentage of foster youth exiting to guardianship has nearly doubled.
In 2010, states claimed an estimated $11.2 million (data adjusted for inflation) of federal Title IV-E funds for subsidized kinship guardianship, compared to $203 million in 2020, reflecting a spike in participation from three states to 42 states, the District of Columbia, 11 tribes, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands as of May 2023.
A few other items highlighted by Casey from Family Ties:
- All 46 responding states said they required child welfare agencies (state or county) to financially support licensed kinship caregivers. Only 30 states “consistently” required this for unlicensed kin.
- Casey asked each state about the use of kinship diversion, which is also referred to as hidden foster care; the practice of child protective services shifting the physical custody of children without an accompanying change in legal custody, which is what happens in a court case when a judge okays a removal. Thirty-three states reported that they allow this practice, while 12 told Casey that it is not permitted.
“More work and more data are needed to help states better understand who these families are, whether and how states are supporting them and the outcomes of children and youth who have been diverted from foster care,” the report stated.
Casey also released its first issue brief under Family Ties, which focuses on how states can license more of its kinship caregivers. The brief is timely in that the Biden administration has recently finalized rules to ease the path to licensure for kin, and requiring that states provide them payments equal to other foster families.
A group of advocacy organizations has already developed a model standard for approving kinship caregivers in the wake of Biden’s new rule.
Note: The Annie E. Casey Foundation provides funding to The Imprint’s parent organization, Fostering Media Connections. They had no involvement with this article, per our editorial independence policy.
