Kinship Caregiving: A Family-Rooted Approach to Child Well-Being

Kinship care is family and friends stepping forward when families are in crisis. Kinship care has emerged as one of the most important, yet often under-recognized forms of caregiving in the United States. Whether done in family-structured informal arrangements or in formal child welfare systems, kinship care supports children’s well-being, preserves family ties, and mitigates long-term trauma. Kinship care is caregiving in which children are brought up by relatives or close family friends when their parents are unable to look after them due to health issues, parental substance use, incarceration, financial difficulties, or safety concerns.

Kinship care typically comes in three forms:

• Informal kinship care: Families make private arrangements without court or agency involvement.
• Kinship diversion: Child welfare agencies identify safety concerns and place children with relatives instead of formal foster care.
• Formal kinship foster care: The state retains custody and relatives serve as licensed or unlicensed foster parents.

Kinship Care and Child Well-Being

Kids who do not receive parent care frequently experience fear, loss, and confusion. Moved through kinship placement, they can be comforted from that trauma by knowing which faces, routines, and surroundings they are used to. They preserve a child’s sense of belonging, a critical foundation for emotional well-being. Keeping in touch with kin members retains relationships to culture, language, and family history. This is most important for kids of color, Native children, and kids from immigrant communities who are overrepresented in child welfare. Preserving cultural continuity fosters greater resilience and long-term mental health.

Research time and again shows that children in kinship care move less frequently, experience fewer school disruptions, and have more stable caregiving relationships than children placed into non-relative foster families. In other words, stability decreases the likelihood of behavioral problems, failing grades, and long-term trauma. Kinship care improves the odds that siblings will stay together—something children repeatedly say is more important than anything else for them before entering care.

Kinship Care and Family Stability

Kinship care is essential to keeping a family unit functioning during crisis. Where children find themselves being shuffled into new, temporary settings, kin are allowed to stay united in relationship and can reduce future separation. When kids live with family, their birth parents tend to stay in better connection with their kids, and they may feel more supported throughout treatment, during recovery, or on their way toward stabilization. This helps reunification outcomes and reduces long-term involvement in foster care. Kinship caregiving activates networks of extended support. Grandparents, siblings, and relatives join hands together in a shared caregiving responsibility that fortifies family bonds and intergenerational resilience.

Kinship placements, of course, make financial sense for child welfare systems, but the cost frequently falls on caregivers—a number of whom are older adults and many living on fixed incomes. When policies include fair financial support, health coverage, legal support, and child care services, people experiencing kinship care not only develop emotional resilience but are also financially stabilized.

Kinship caregiving is not just a fallback that adds to the child’s family’s ability to function effectively; it is a quality of care, which takes on life of its own. Kinship care draws on established relationships and already existing family resources to decrease trauma, heal, and strengthen communities. One of the most humane and powerful ways to raise children in a caring atmosphere, in families rooted to their kin, is supporting kinship families.

Family Resource Center (FRC), operated by FSR, is the only family resource center in Minnesota that received grant funding to provide a special focus on kinship caregivers.

For additional information, see the Annie E. Casey Foundation, "Strengthening Support for Kinship Caregivers." For information about FRC kinship care services, check out thier website or call 507-218-3255