By Mercedes Mark
According to Alliance for Children’s Rights (ACR), many relative foster parents live at or below the poverty line, but have been known to be the backbone of the child welfare system (ACR, 2016). Research data from the administration for Children and Family Services, and the division of the U.S. Department (ACR, 2016) of Children and Family Services, show one-third of relative caregivers nationwide live in poverty. Grandparents alone care for more than 2.5 million children, and in California 36 percent of foster children are placed with relatives (ACR, 2016).
This number has jumped to 43 percent in Los Angeles County, but yet child welfare systems traditionally provide the least amount of support and funding to children placed with relative caregivers (ACR, 2016).
Kinship care under the ASFA’s policy has failed to meet the needs of many relative caregivers by setting foster care rates based on the type of placement rather than on the needs of the child (ACR, 2016). California leaves many relative foster parents without adequate funding, resources and support (ACR, 2016).
Unintended Consequences
The amended law will now help the relative caregiver’s inequalities remain in the system. California lacks ways to support relative placements to ensure that all children in foster care receive appropriate funding to meet the child’s specialized needs, regardless of the youth’s federal eligibility or the youth’s placement in relative or nonrelative foster care (ACR, 2016). For example, if a foster child is ineligible for federal foster care benefits, which 56 percent are because of antiquated eligibility rules, that child can only receive state foster care benefits if that child is placed in a non-relative foster care placement or group home. Relatives caring for a non-federally eligible child do not receive foster care benefits at all. Instead, the relative foster parent can only receive CalWORKs benefits, which provide about half of what the state of California has determined to be the minimum amount support necessary for a foster child. This means that a non-relative foster parent caring for a non-federally eligible child receives child receives $836 monthly, while a relative foster parent only receives $367 monthly (ACR, 2016).
Lastly, relative placement is preferred by federal and state law because research indicates that these children experience fewer traumas and have better outcomes than children who are placed with non-relatives. Unfortunately, many foster children spend the first few months in foster care shelters or with foster parents who they do not know while their kin navigate the bureaucratic process of having their criminal background reviewed and being granted an exemption for any past offense, no matter how minor (ACR, 2016).
