Every Child Needs a Family

by Jaia Peterson Lent, deputy executive director at Generations United

(This article first appeared in GRAND Magazine.)

For the majority of children in the U.S. gifts and family may seem almost synonymous with the holidays. But for the more than 55,000 children and youth in the U.S. foster care system who are living in group homes, the gift of family feels largely out of reach. One in seven children under the care of the child welfare system is placed in a group setting, even though more than 40 percent of these children have no documented clinical or behavioral needs that warrant placing them in group settings without families.

Every child needs a family and research shows they do best when that family is headed by a grandparent or other relative. Compared to children in group care and those in foster care with non-relatives, children in foster care with grandparents or other relatives have more stable lives, better behavioral and mental health, and are less likely to run away. Perhaps most importantly, they are most likely to report they “always feel loved.”

But the child welfare system is not set up to provide the necessary outreach, supports and services grandparents and other relatives need when they step in to raise children.

Bob Ruble of California understands well the importance of supporting relatives to keep children with family and out of group care. Bob explains, “My sister had many life issues and had been making poor and unsafe decisions while raising her daughter, my niece. When my niece was 8, I made the call my sister was arrested. My niece was removed from her care and placed in group home care. I assumed I was done. The next day I got the call and was asked to have her placed with me. There was no one else who could and I was told if I said no then she would be placed with a stranger in foster care so I stepped in to care for her. My journey began and I was left with little direction on how to proceed on my own.”

Yet Bob was fortunate in many ways. He had a steady income and was able to handle the financial issues until additional resources were made available and he had the stamina to track down the elusive information and support he and his niece needed.

In contrast, of the 2.6 million grandparents responsible for grandchildren across the country, more than one in five lives below the poverty line. Twenty-six percent of them have a disability and are juggling their own health care needs in addition to the needs of the children. The vast majority do not have supports or do not know how to access the supports and services that are available to them.

In the midst of this holiday season, Congress has the opportunity to give the gift of a safe and loving family to children who cannot remain with their parents. Bipartisan legislation called the Family First Prevention Services Act passed the House of Representatives in June. The legislation would prioritize families for children and reform federal child welfare financing so that those funds could be used for supportive services to grandparents and other relatives to help keep children with them and out of foster care when possible. But the Senate left for recess in September without passing the bill. Even following a divisive and contentious election season, the importance of supporting families for children is something elected officials on both sides of the aisle can agree on. They simply need to make it a priority and get it done when they reconvene for a lame duck session in November.

And if they do, Bob, who has gone on to become a spokesperson and advocate for children being raised by relatives, will highlight for them what the gift of family can mean in the life of a child. Now age 22, Bob’s niece, Kindra, is attending Fullerton College and is pursuing a major in art and a minor in psychology. He is so proud of her and reports that she is an amazingly talented artist and an equally skilled writer. Lately, she has been talking with Bob about plans to write her story about how important it was for her to remain with family. When she shares it, she hopes it may help others this holiday season understand what family has meant to her. A true gift.

Foster Kinship

EDITOR’S NOTE: Each week, we feature intergenerational program ideas that were tried and successful. This series is a tool to highlight various age-optimized programs and practices. The program descriptions are provided by representatives of the programs. Inclusion in this series does not imply Generations United’s endorsement or recommendation, but rather encourages ideas to inspire other programs.

This week’s cool idea is Foster Kinship, a nonprofit that empowers kinship caregivers to provide the most stable and permanent placements for children in their home. 

(Check our archives for parts 1-36.)

When children can’t be with their parents, they should be with their family.

Foster Kinship is a local nonprofit exclusively focused on serving kinship families and the over 19,000 children in kinship care in Nevada. 

To improve outcomes for children in kinship care, Foster Kinship empowers kinship caregivers to provide the safest, most stable and permanent placements for the children in their home.

Foster Kinship provides three free programs for kinship caregivers: support, advocacy and case management.

By helping to “keep home in the family” for these vulnerable children, Foster Kinship envisions a safe and healthy childhood for all children in kinship care.

Got something cool you tried that was successful? Why not tweet your cool intergenerational ideas to #cooligideas? You can also post them to our Intergenerational Connections Facebook Group. We want to highlight innovative age-optimized programs and practices through our blog, social media and weekly e-newsletter! Share the inspiration.

Intergenerational Themes Championed at the Senate Finance Committee

Earlier today the Senate Finance Committee passed two historic bills out of committee, the Improved Adoption Incentives and Relative Guardianship Support Act and the Elder Justice Act. The bills are a testament to the value of intergenerational cooperation and public policy.

Chairman Baucus began the markup by quoting Hubert Humphrey, “The moral test of government is how the government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life – the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.” By battling elder abuse and finding permanent homes for children, the Senate Finance Committee passed that intergenerational test with flying colors today.

The Improved Adoption Incentives Act contains many of the same provisions of the Kinship Caregiver Support Act, including authorizing subsidized guardianship to enable children in the care of grandparents and other relatives to exit foster care into permanency; establishing Kinship navigator programs to help link relative caregivers both inside and outside of the formal child welfare system to a broad range of services and supports that will help them meet the needs of the children in their care; requiring notice be given to adult relatives of a child if he or she is placed in foster care; and allowing states in a demonstration program the option to set separate licensing standards for relative foster parents and non-relative foster parents.

Chairman Baucus remarked that the Improved Adoption Incentives and Relative Guardianship Support Act was the most far-reaching and important piece of child welfare legislation the committee had considered in a decade.

There are still several steps before these important bills become law, but I don’t want to let this day pass without congratulating Senators Clinton, Grassley, Lincoln, Rockefeller and Snowe, and many others for their hard work and leadership to move both pieces of legislation.

Lastly, let me echo Senator Grassley's request that this legislation get passed before the Adoption Incentive Program expires at the end of the month. Our children have waited too long for a permanent home for us to delay any longer.

Children Unnecessarily Wait for Placement in Kinship Families

I want to pass on an article in today's New York Times by Erik Eckholm about the alarming amount of time children are waiting to be placed with kinship families while interstate background checks are performed.

The potential damage done by not placing foster children expeditiously with available relatives is too great to allow the current status quo to continue. Eckholm writes, “Minimizing moves and placing children with a qualified parent or relative are bedrock principles of child welfare.” The safety of a home should always be checked before placement, but holding children in care unnecessarily long could prove to be more damaging than originally thought. As I talked about in this blog earlier a few weeks ago, A new study, published in the June issue of the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine found substantial benefits for children placed in kinship care through increased stability and fewer behavioral problems. The research also revealed that these benefits diminished if the child waited substantial time before a placement with a relative. While states and the administration haggle over a fix they should not forget that their indecision places vulnerable children in additional jeopardy.