New Source Book Offers Comprehensive Analysis of Kinship Care Policies and Practices

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 10, 2003—Relatives and family friends are caring for 2.3 million children who live away from their parents, often because of abuse or neglect. Kinship Care: Making the Most of a Valuable Resource, a new Urban Institute Press book edited by Rob Geen, provides the first sweeping examination of this common, but unresolved, approach to foster care.

While states' use of kin as foster parents has grown rapidly since the early 1980s, kinship care remains a field of policy and practice mired in controversy and complexity. Little information has been available in one place—until now—on how and when local child welfare agencies turn to kin as foster parents, how agencies' approach to kinship care differs from their stance on traditional foster care, and how local kinship care policies and practices vary across states.

"It has been difficult for federal and state policymakers, as well as advocates and practitioners, to evaluate how well kinship care ensures children's safety, promotes permanency in their living situation, and enhances their well-being—three basic goals of the child welfare system," says Geen, an Urban Institute researcher and expert on child welfare.

Kinship Care: Making the Most of a Valuable Resource addresses that information void by describing frontline kinship care practices and providing an in-depth understanding of how and why child welfare agencies approach kin and non-kin foster care differently. Using results from 96 focus groups involving child welfare workers and kinship caregivers and interviews with local administrators, advocates, and service providers, the nine chapters give a thorough overview of the issues, focus on agency efforts to recruit kin to act as foster parents, examine agency practices once a child has been placed with kin, explore child welfare agencies' use of voluntary kinship care, present the experiences of kinship foster parents, and offer important recommendations that will help improve policy, program development, and caseworker and kinship caregiver training.

"Kinship Care provides a comprehensive, up-to-date analysis of the issues, research findings, practices, and policy debates surrounding kinship care," says Sandra Stukes Chipungu, associate dean of Howard University's School of Social Work. "Its wealth of data and objective presentation make it a major contribution to the ongoing debate on foster care and permanency planning for children in the child welfare system."

Kinship Care: Making the Most of a Valuable Resource, edited by Rob Geen, is available in paperback from the Urban Institute Press (6" x 9", 302 pages, ISBN 0-87766-718-7, $29.50). Order online or call (202) 261-5687; toll-free 1-877-847-7377.