Kinship Care

Of the more than 400,000 kids who enter the foster care system in the United States each year, about 32% are cared for by a relative other than their parents  (https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/cb/afcarsreport25.pdf).  This is known as "kinship care." Kinship care takes place when CPS gets involved and informs the parents that the child or children are going to be removed.  They always ask first:  is there a relative or friend who can care for the child?  

It is my understanding that kinship care differs from when a family member enters the picture PRIOR to CPS getting involved.  When children are cared for by relatives other than parents before CPS involvement, they aren't considered foster children (and aren't monitored).  I, for example, would fall into this category:  I started living with my Gram at 16.  I wasn't "removed" from my mother's home.  (well, unless you count being kicked out)  I wasn't removed by the State, I mean to say.  That way, I was off CPS's radar.

Once CPS is involved, it's a different story.

In the case of Baby O and W, they were exclusively with non-relative foster parents.  When the case planner contacted me (shock!) for a home visit a week after the boys arrived, she told me that she did not expect them to be with me very long because their grandmother was planning on taking them, all three of them.

Now, this confused me.  I mean, I think it is a great thing that the grandmother stepped up and wanted to take the boys.  Baby O had been in care since three months old.  In the case of W, he had been in foster care for more than two years of his three years on earth.  The older brother had been in care even longer than that.

Where was she all this time?  Had the grandmother just found out that her grandchildren were in foster care? 

I never did get an answer.

But I was told that they would probably only be there a few weeks, 30 days at most.  Kinship care always "outranks" any non-relative placement, even though it was my understanding that the grandmother hadn't seen the boys in years (and in Baby O's case, ever).  

Either way, I resigned myself to it being short term, and that was that.