It’s 10 PM, and a caseworker has just had to separate two children from their family. Ideally, those children would go to kin. A grandmother, an aunt or uncle, a close family friend. But she needs a placement tonight, and finding relatives on short notice is difficult when it means searching online and dialing numbers that are disconnected. A licensed foster family is one phone call away. So instead, she places the children with a family they have never met. Community foster parents are a really important piece of the puzzle too, but it’s important to find kin quickly to prioritize them when possible.
Manual processes to find kin create friction, making non-kin placement the default. Searching for relatives can take days or weeks in most child welfare agencies. Caseworkers face placement deadlines measured in hours and the responsibility of keeping children safe overnight. The national share of children in foster care placed with relatives or kin has climbed steadily, from 26% in 2007 to 35% in 2021 to 39% in FY 2024, according to the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS). Real progress, with room to go further.
Some agencies have moved further than the national average by redesigning which path is easier. Colorado reached 50% for the first time. Maryland increased kinship placements by 33% statewide, representing an additional 330 children living with family.
These agencies reshaped their culture around kinship, created policy mechanisms that made non-kin placement the exception, and replaced ad hoc phone calls with systematic family finding. They built the infrastructure to make kinship the default.
Why Kinship Placement?
Children do better when they live with people they already know. Peer-reviewed research consistently shows that children placed with relatives, family friends, or other adults they already know experience greater placement stability and fewer behavioral challenges than those in non-relative foster care.
A systematic review of 120 studies found that children in kinship care maintain more intact family relationships and stronger mental and emotional outcomes. At 36 months post-placement, 32% of children in kinship care exhibited behavioral challenges compared to 46% in non-relative foster care. Children who gain kinship support during their time in care are also less likely to re-enter care after exiting.
The child stays connected to their family, their culture, and their community.
Why Culture Change Drives Kinship Placement Rates
Policy mandates alone do not appear to move kinship placement rates far enough. The Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab identified why: placing a child in a preapproved licensed foster home is often simpler than placing with kin who have not been licensed yet. When the easier path leads to non-relative placement, that is where most placements go, regardless of what the policy manual says.
The agencies that moved their rates addressed that dynamic at the decision point.
Colorado: Kinship Navigators Embedded in County Practice
Colorado’s shift began with the Colorado Kinnected Kinship Navigator Program, a county-administered model that embeds dedicated kinship staff directly into child welfare units. Navigators conduct family search and engagement, facilitate family meetings, and connect caregivers with support services. The approach was practice-driven, built around frontline staff rather than top-down mandates.
The results came faster than expected. From February 2023 through January 2024, 50% of children and youth placed in foster care had their initial placement with kinship caregivers. It was the first time Colorado hit that milestone, a year ahead of schedule. By 2025, the rate reached 53% of children entering foster care going first to a relative or someone they know.
Colorado also addressed a barrier that other states have not. The Kinship Foster Care Homes Law (SB 24-008), passed in 2024, reduced training requirements for kinship caregivers from 27 hours to six, relaxed non-safety-related home requirements, and created financial support for non-certified kin. Kinship foster care certifications increased 38% statewide within the first year. The state now has more than 800 kinship families, up from 588 the year before.
Philadelphia: Commissioner-Level Accountability for Congregate Care
Philadelphia created an even more senior checkpoint. The city’s Congregate Care Scope requires that any referral for dependent placement in congregate care go through the Commissioner’s approval process. That review includes efforts to identify a family-based placement, a psychiatric or psychological evaluation completed within 60 days, and a review of the youth’s case information. The result: a 70% reduction in dependent youth congregate care placements from 2014 to 2023.
New York and Oklahoma: Dedicated Staff and a Kin-First Firewall
New York hired dedicated “kinship champions” who partner with parents to identify kin before first placement. Combined with a “kin-first firewall” that makes non-relative placement difficult to approve, New York moved from 1 in 5 placements to 1 in 3 with kin, a 67% increase in kinship placement share.
Oklahoma built a similar firewall at the senior-staff level. State policy requires a deputy director to sign off on any group home placement for youth 13 and older, and a director to sign off on group home placements for youth under 13, per the Child Welfare Playbook. A caseworker who cannot reach kin is not blocked from placing a child safely. The sign-off requirement asks what family search steps have already happened and what remains to try, so kin engagement stays the working default rather than the ideal exception.
Other states have taken complementary approaches. Connecticut conducts family team meetings before a child enters care, identifying placement options while the family and their support network are still in the room.
Agencies that treat family identification as an ongoing structured process, not a single phone call at the moment of separation, surface more options.
The Common Thread
What do Colorado, Philadelphia, New York, and Oklahoma have in common? Each one redesigned which path required the most effort, through navigators in county practice, Commissioner-level approval, or kin-first firewalls. If placing with kin requires more effort than placing with a licensed foster family, the system will default to the familiar process. Look at your own agency’s workflow and the answer becomes specific. The agencies that moved their kinship rates changed which path required justification.
How Expanding Kin Definitions Drives Higher Placement Rates
Agencies with the highest kinship placement rates deliberately broadened their definition of kin. That broader definition includes fictive kin such as the godmother, the longtime family friend, the neighbor who already picks the child up from school. A child’s safety net includes more than people who share their last name.
Federal policy explicitly authorizes this expanded approach. The Children’s Bureau’s kinship navigator guidance (PI-18-11) specifies that agencies may serve families headed by a grandparent or other relative as well as tribal kin, extended family and friends, or other fictive kin. Kinship placements preserve family connections and cultural traditions while minimizing the trauma of separation, and a wider definition of kin expands the pool of adults available for placement and support. But a wider pool only matters if an agency can actually find the people in it.
Systematic Family Finding Replaced Ad Hoc Outreach
Maryland’s statewide family finding program offers the clearest evidence of what happens when a manual, inconsistent process becomes a repeatable, measurable one.
What Maryland’s Manual Process Looked Like
Before Maryland deployed its family finding technology in September 2025, caseworkers relied on manual searches across disconnected systems. Rebecca Rice, director of out-of-home care at Maryland Department of Human Services (DHS), described searches that could otherwise take days or weeks. A caseworker toggling between databases, dialing numbers that go to voicemail, trying to piece together a family tree under a placement deadline.
What the Statewide System Produced
After deploying a statewide family finding system, caseworkers completed more than 4,500 searches and identified 4,300 potential connections, averaging 26 connections per search. The portion of children in care living with kin increased 33% statewide, representing an additional 330 children living with family. Baltimore City saw an 18% increase. Over 1,500 staff received training on the new system.
The share of kinship caregivers who were licensed jumped from 25% in December 2024 to 86% by December 2025, per Maryland DHS. Unlicensed kinship caregivers often cannot access the financial support, training, and services that prevent placement disruption. Finding kin is the first step. Licensing and supporting caregivers is what makes placements last.
The Technology Behind the Results
Maryland used Binti to power this effort. Our Family Finding & Engagement module enables caseworkers to search up-to-date public and proprietary records through our Thomson Reuters integration, send automated outreach via email and letters, log each contact attempt, and generate relationship maps. Each search takes approximately 10 fewer hours than the manual process, returning that time to caseworkers for the conversations and in-person visits that actually place children with family.
Maryland’s effort also benefited from collaboration with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which helped integrate kin-first strategies and caregiver support models into the state’s approach. The state’s Kinship Law, effective October 1, 2024, established a separate kinship approval framework with kin-specific licensing standards and financial support for licensed kinship families. That licensing infrastructure created the bridge to the federal policy changes now making kinship-first practice easier for every state.
Federal Policy Now Supports Kinship-First Practice
For years, agencies that wanted to license kinship families under different standards risked losing federal reimbursement. That barrier is falling.
In September 2023, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) published a final rule (88 FR 66700) permitting Title IV-E agencies to adopt separate licensing standards for kinship foster homes. The rule also requires payment equity: children placed with licensed kinship families must receive the same maintenance payments as those in non-relative homes. The Family First Prevention Services Act added a dedicated funding stream for kinship navigator programs, with a 50% federal match available regardless of Title IV-E income eligibility.
In less than two and a half years, 24 jurisdictions (19 states and 5 Tribes) have already submitted plan amendments to adopt separate licensing standards for kin. That is meaningful movement in a short window. The agencies profiled in this article built kinship-first practice before the federal framework existed; the framework now makes it easier for every remaining jurisdiction to follow the same path, and the path is well marked. Federal alignment is the tailwind; what follows the initial placement is what determines whether gains hold.
Why Sustaining Kinship Gains Requires Caregiver Support
Kinship placement without ongoing caregiver support can be difficult to sustain. Chapin Hall’s research draws a direct line: lack of resources to support the financial, mental, and emotional well-being of children and caregivers increases the likelihood of disruption. A Houston-based study of kinship placements intended to be permanent found disruption rates approaching 50%.
Ohio’s experience illustrates the pattern at state scale. Under its ProtectOHIO Title IV-E waiver, 16 counties implemented a Kinship Supports Intervention that created dedicated kinship coordinator positions, assessed caregiver needs, and provided tailored support plans. Children whose caregivers received KSI services experienced greater placement stability and were less likely to re-enter care. During the waiver period, 85% of children in KSI-supported kinship placements had no moves, compared with 78% in comparison counties.
When the waiver period ended, that infrastructure became uneven. Ohio’s own 2025 statewide assessment flags insufficient support for kinship caregivers as an active barrier to maintaining placement stability, even though the state’s kinship placement rate sits at 57%. The intervention produced results. Holding those results required investment in caregiver support that outlasted the waiver.
Building the Infrastructure for Kinship-First Practice
That caseworker at 10 PM, the one choosing between a foster family and an aunt she hasn’t been able to reach, makes a different decision when the infrastructure exists. When her agency’s culture treats kinship as the expectation, when non-kin placement requires justification, and when a single search surfaces 26 connections instead of two.
The agencies in this article built that infrastructure. The children in their care are living with people they know because of it.
Your agency doesn’t have to be Colorado to start. The firewalls, navigator models, and family finding systems above are pieces, not an all-or-nothing rebuild, and any one of them can move your kinship rate in the first year.
We built our Family Finding & Engagement and Caregiver Licensing modules for agencies working to close that gap. See Binti in action.
Frequently Asked Questions About Kinship Placement
What is kinship placement in child welfare?
Kinship placement is the practice of placing a child entering foster care with a relative or a non-relative adult who has an existing meaningful relationship with the child or family. This broader category is sometimes called fictive kin. Federal kinship navigator guidance (PI-18-11) authorizes this definition, which includes grandparents, aunts and uncles, older siblings, tribal kin, and close family friends.
How are agencies increasing kinship placement rates?
The agencies that have moved their rates changed which path required the most effort. Colorado embedded kinship navigators into county practice and reduced kinship training from 27 hours to six. New York and Oklahoma built sign-off requirements that make non-kin placement the exception, not the default. Maryland replaced manual family search with a statewide system that now surfaces an average of 26 connections per search.
What is a kin-first firewall?
A kin-first firewall is a policy mechanism that requires senior-staff approval before a child can be placed with a non-relative foster family. The firewall asks what family search steps have already happened and what remains to try, shifting the default from the easiest available placement to the most family-connected one. New York and Oklahoma both use variations of this approach.
Does the federal government support kinship-first practice?
Yes. A September 2023 ACF final rule permits Title IV-E agencies to adopt separate licensing standards for kinship foster homes and requires payment equity for licensed kinship families. The Family First Prevention Services Act added a dedicated funding stream for kinship navigator programs at a 50% federal match.
What role does technology play in kinship placement?
Technology closes the time gap between when a child needs a safe placement and when a relative can be found, engaged, and supported. Maryland’s statewide family finding system reduced average search time by about 10 hours per search and surfaced 26 connections per search. Licensing technology that supports a separate kinship track helps agencies approve kin caregivers fast enough to match the placement timeline caseworkers actually face.
