A social worker calls on a Tuesday afternoon. She's investigating a case in your extended family. The children need somewhere safe to stay tonight, and she's asking whether you can take them in while the agency works through the next steps. Or maybe it's a caseworker reaching out because your grandchildren have been separated from their parents, and the agency wants to know if you're willing to step in.
Either way, you're suddenly weighing one of the biggest decisions of your life. Kinship care means placing a child with a relative or another trusted adult they already know because their parents cannot care for them right now.
This guide is for you. It's also for social workers, caseworkers, and agencies that work to support you. It covers what kinship care is, how it works, and what help exists.
What Kinship Care Is
"Kinship care" is a term used in social work and family law to refer to the process of placing a child with a relative or someone the child already knows and trusts because their parents cannot care for them right now. That relative might be a grandparent, an aunt, an uncle, or an older sibling. It might also be someone who isn't related by blood but has a real, existing relationship with the child: a godparent, a family friend, a neighbor, a coach, or a teacher. Child welfare professionals and social workers call these trusted adults fictive kin.
Kinship care includes more than 2.5 million children across the country in a range of arrangements. In the formal child welfare system, placements with relatives or kinship caregivers reached 39% of all children as of fiscal year 2024, an all-time high.
Kinship care differs from what most people picture when they hear "foster care." In a typical non-relative foster care arrangement, a child lives with a family outside the child's existing family or support network. Kinship care keeps children with people they already know. That distinction matters for the child's sense of safety, belonging, and connection to their own history and culture.
Who Can Be a Kinship Caregiver
Who counts as "kin" is broader than many people assume, and it's an area where federal law gives states significant room to decide. The federal placement preference favors relatives, but each state writes its own definition of "relative" and "kin", some narrowly, limited to blood relatives within a certain degree of kinship, and others broadly, to include the wider circle of adults a child already trusts. That circle often extends well beyond the immediate family tree, reaching into schools, faith communities, and neighborhoods.
Depending on your state, a kinship caregiver may include:
- A grandparent
- An aunt or uncle
- An older sibling
- A step-parent or step-relative
- A godparent
- A family friend or neighbor
- A teacher, coach, or clergy member
- Any adult with a longstanding, significant relationship with the child (often called "fictive kin")
State definitions and approval processes are evolving quickly. Texas recognizes kinship providers as relatives or other adults with a longstanding and significant relationship to the child, while California recognizes Non-Relative Extended Family Members with a familial or mentoring relationship, verified by teachers, clergy, or other community members. Colorado enacted SB24-008 in May 2024, establishing a kinship certification process with provisional placement and modified training requirements, and Ohio's Kinship Supports Intervention (KSI), implemented through a Title IV-E waiver, pairs kinship families with dedicated social work support.
If you are not a blood relative, ask your state's child welfare agency or assigned social worker whether their definition of kin includes you. In many states, it does.
Why Kinship Care Matters for Children
Research consistently shows kinship care offers meaningful advantages for children. The most consistent findings point to these benefits:
- Greater placement stability: A large review of research found that children placed with kinship caregivers experience less placement disruption than those placed in non-relative foster care.
- Fewer behavioral and mental health challenges: The same research review reported that children in kinship care often experience fewer behavioral problems, fewer mental health disorders, and better overall well-being than children in non-relative foster care.
- Stronger sibling and parent ties: Kinship foster care research indicates that children placed with relatives are more likely to maintain ties with siblings and have more frequent contact with birth parents than children in non-relative foster care.
- Continuity of culture and identity: For many communities, particularly Indigenous and African American families, kinship care has long been one way families hold together through hard seasons. Strong ties to family and cultural identity can help children maintain important connections during a difficult time.
Types of Kinship Care Arrangements
Not all kinship care looks the same. The type of arrangement determines who has legal authority over the child, what financial support the caregiver can access, and how much agency involvement there is.
Informal Kinship Care
Some arrangements stay entirely within the family. In informal kinship care, there is no government involvement and the family decides among themselves. This is the most common form of kinship care, but caregivers have little legal authority without a court order or power of attorney, and financial support is minimal.
Unlicensed Kinship Placement
Other arrangements involve the child welfare agency to different degrees. In voluntary kinship care, the agency becomes involved, typically through a social worker's investigation, but places the child with a relative without assuming legal custody. The birth parent generally retains parental rights, and financial support is significantly less than in formal foster care.
Licensed Kinship Care
Formal kinship care begins when the child welfare agency takes legal custody of the child and places them with a relative who may or may not be licensed as a caregiver. Licensed kinship caregivers can access Title IV-E maintenance payments at the full foster care rate. Unlicensed kinship caregivers in the same formal arrangement may receive much less financial support.
Guardianship
Some kinship arrangements create a longer-term legal role for the caregiver. Kinship guardianship transfers legal authority over the child from the child welfare system to the relative caregiver without terminating parental rights. The caregiver holds full legal authority, and the child exits the system.
Adoption
Kinship adoption goes further by permanently terminating the birth parents' legal rights and creating a new legal parent-child relationship. A grandmother who adopts becomes the child's legal parent.
What Financial Support Is Available
The main financial supports for kinship caregivers vary by arrangement type and licensing status:
- Title IV-E maintenance payments: For caregivers in licensed kinship care, these payments cover food, clothing, shelter, school supplies, and daily supervision at the full foster care rate. Title IV-E eligibility requires that the child be in formal kinship care with a licensed caregiver.
- Kinship Guardianship Assistance (KinGAP): After a caregiver becomes the child's legal guardian, KinGAP provides ongoing monthly payments. Payment rates vary widely by state. Licensing is generally a prerequisite for KinGAP eligibility. KinGAP is widely described as a cost-effective permanency pathway because foster care is generally more expensive and guardianship can reduce administrative and court-related costs.
- TANF child-only grants: For informal kinship caregivers with no involvement from the system, these grants are a common option. The caregiver's income is not counted; eligibility and benefits are typically based on the child's circumstances.
- Kinship navigator programs: These programs connect caregivers to TANF, SNAP, Medicaid, legal assistance, respite care, support groups, and counseling. Eleven states and Puerto Rico have been approved to operate evidence-based kinship navigator programs under Title IV-E, with 50% federal financial participation.
The bottom line for families is practical: getting licensed can be one of the most powerful financial levers available to you. In many states, monthly support for licensed caregivers is substantially higher than for unlicensed caregivers, though the exact difference varies by state and program.
How to Start if You're Considering Kinship Care
The steps below walk you through what to do and what to expect.
1. Contact Your State's Child Welfare Agency
Start by contacting your state's child welfare agency or kinship care contact as soon as possible. The Child Welfare Information Gateway maintains state kinship contacts at childwelfare.gov.
2. Ask the Right Questions
When you call, ask:
- Does your state have a kin-specific licensing or approval track?
- Can the child be placed with me on an emergency basis while licensing is completed?
- Is there a kinship navigator program in my area?
- What financial assistance is available before and after licensing?
3. Prepare for Background Checks and a Home Visit
Background checks are often required for you and every adult age 18 or older in your household, and a home visit may be part of the approval process. These checks often include fingerprint-based background checks and child abuse registry checks. A safety assessment looks at your physical environment. Under some kin-specific standards, the focus is more narrowly on safety-related requirements.
4. Complete a Home Study
A home study usually includes interviews with household members, conducted by a social worker, to assess your capacity to meet the child's needs, as well as a review of finances and relevant family history. In states that have adopted kin-specific licensing tracks, training requirements may be reduced for kinship caregivers, with licensing requirements focused on safety checks and caregiver or home assessments.
5. Stay Connected to Ongoing Support
Ongoing contact continues throughout the case. A social worker or caseworker remains involved, and navigator services are available in many jurisdictions. Kinship navigator programs exist specifically to help caregivers find services and apply for financial assistance, and they may provide information or referrals related to licensing. The Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network maintains a directory of navigator programs by state.
If you are a grandparent, an aunt, an uncle, a godparent, or a family friend willing to provide a child with stability and love, the system needs you. You deserve clear information, real financial support, and a licensing process that treats you as the family you already are.
Help More Children Stay With Family
When a child can be placed with someone they already know, the rest of the case gets easier: placements hold, sibling ties stay intact, and caseworkers spend less time on emergency moves. That's why finding kin early matters, and why agencies need tools built for this work.
Binti partners with agencies by offering them tools designed to support kinship from first contact. Our Family Finding & Engagement module helps agencies identify relatives and trusted adults early, so a child's first placement can be with someone they already know. Our Caregiver Licensing module supports kin-specific approval tracks and provisional placements, returning time to caseworkers for the family preparation and follow-up that help children reach safe, stable family placements sooner.
Ready to see how we support kinship care from first contact to permanency? Schedule a meeting now.
