The Kinship Caregiver Support Act.

Well, it can be good and it can be bad.

I would take care of my relatives children regardless of monetary
compensation, and seek guardianship.

If a relative is willing to take a child because they're receiving funding
then I can't help but think that the only reason in doing so, is because
of the money.

Of course, it wouldn't hurt to get some additional money in raising
children, but not if the ulterior motive is money alone.

Well, any system can be abused of course, but hopefully acceptable safeguards are put in place.

I can see this as a great relief to people who are willing but on low or fixed incomes ~ say, for example, grandparents.

Yes, I definitely agree here, Tico, grandparents would welcome some
financial help, and it seems there are an awful lot of folks
out there raising their grandchildren.

It is interesting to me that CJane is the first to respond to this thread, because I know she comes from a similar mindset as me.

And yeah, Tico, at first blush that was how I thought about it but after thinking about it all day I'm scratching my head. It's kind of one of those "feel good" laws.

Would this create an incentive for people to take in a child that they otherwise have no interest in?

I guess what bothers me most is the "establish separate licensing standards and regulations". I wonder what those are.

In a way it seems like an easy out for the government to maybe not have to keep track of these kids.

Knowing what we know about the cyclic nature of neglect and abuse and violence - is putting the kid with relatives a good solution? How do we know? How do we keep track?

I'm just not sure.

My newspaper was urging readers to write their representatives in support of this bill.

I know a family who took in three foster children because their "real" family was in turmoil. They had two children of their own.

PA passed a law mandating that children be put in child safety seats. This meant that the Foster Family, travelling as a family, had to take two cars.

Extra kids mean extra expense. In this case it was two cars (or a bigger car) but extra kids are extra expense.

I know of at least two cases where grandmothers are raising grandchildren. One is retired and on a fixed income. The other is doing factory work. Both are struggling financially.

I assume that financial aid for blod-kin fostering would come with some sort of supervision?

I'm not sure how it would work.

It seems to me that in most cases where a grandparent is raising a child it is an informal agreement -- the kids haven't been removed from the parent's home by CPS or any like agency.

I know when I tried to inform my state that Mo's parents had left him here and never returned they said there wasn't anything they would/could do unless I wanted him picked up and placed in foster care. I certainly didn't want that to happen; I imagine most grandparents would feel the same way about the grandkids they end up raising.

I know a lot of grandparents are raising their grandkids and that they could use some financial help. I'm just not sure if that is the direction the law would take. Somehow I doubt that those are the situations that the law would step in to protect.

I know of one woman who is the foster parent for 3 of her nieces/nephews and gets a monthly check from the state to cover some of her costs. Without it she wouldn't be able to afford to care for them.

fishin', do you know if the children were first removed from their parent's home by an agency?

I'm not very objective here, especially after having had an insight
in the social service operations during the adoption process of my daughter.

It seems, relatives don't have to go through the conventional foster care program to be eligible to raise a child, like non-relatives do. To me, it is an easy way out to drop off the kids with relatives and not have them included in the social service care where case workers need to check up on the kids
once a month - which is not much to begin with.

Currently, if relatives are willing to take the child/ren and apply for
assistance, they will receive it, depending on income. So why change it?

One reason could be that there are not enough foster parents for all
the children in need of a secure home. Then again, the child was taken
away from his parents house for a reason, and having the child live
in a relative's house means that it probably will have relations with his
parents too. I am not sure if that is always a plus.

They were. There were several incidents that led up to it but the State finally pulled the children from their mother's home. This woman then took in her sister's children and the mother went missing. (Their father is in prison.)

I haven't spoken to this woman in a few months but the last I knew of she hadn't heard from her sister in over 3 years.

In that situation, kinship care makes perfect sense.

I just don't think the law will offer protection for people like the ones Noddy knows -- people who wake up one day and find themselves raising their grandchildren.

I would imagine those people feel like if they report the child being there they are going to make trouble for their kid, which will make trouble for their grandchild. Trouble with an uncertain outcome.

At least that was the way I thought when I woke up one morning and Mo had been here for three months and it was looking like nobody was coming back for him. He was finally getting settled. Mr. B and I were finally getting settled. I thought someone, somewhere should know he was here and their "solution" was to pick him up and put him in foster care with the off chance that he could be eventually fostered to me.

Luckily money wasn't a factor in our situation or there is no telling where Mo would be right now.

I do know most members of his insanely dysfuctional bio-family. For a couple of hundred bucks a month one of them might have stepped up to the plate to raise him.

Determining the "best interest of the child" is always a judgement call.

We talk about this a lot at work.


Here, indigenous kids (who they bend over backwards not to remove, anyway, because of the abuses of the past) are placed with kin if there is a ghost of a chance that there is anyone. Sometimes this means that indigenous carers may have ten or more kids!!!!!


The same is so, but less desperately so, with non indigenous kids.


I think there is no doubt at all that child support should be paid to these carers, just as it is with foster carers.


I have concerns about it, too, unless there is some really good assessment process to look at the kin carers, and I don't think there is. There is SOME process, but I suspect it to be hurried and desperate.

Certainly, there are lots of great carers who are grandparents etc, but the cycle of abuse stuff mentioned by Boomer (I think) worries the heck out of us, too.

Thing is that, in my state at least, the foster system is in such a terrible state, that really, in assessing what to do with kids, we are often looking more at the "least worst" option, not the best.



And I agree about the uncertainty thing.


Child welfare folk will not investigate if the child is safe right then and there.

So...you can't get them to assess the parenting capacity of someone who has dumped a kid with their aunt, or grandmother (or Boomer) unless the parent comes back and takes and abuses the kid. The welfare people say "take it to family court" (which I understand, because they are overwhelmed.)


Lawyers generally advise people to refrain from action, because the judgments are almost bizarrely unpredictable, until and unless the parent comes back in no state to care for the kid.


I once tried to move heaven and earth to get three siblings taken on by the system.


Two of them were living with a non relative, who had been professionally involved with caring for one of the kids when he was badly (because of drugged negligence) injured.

The father gradually left the kids with this woman and her family more and more (sound familiar, Boomer) until everyone was thoroughly attached, and the kids doing well.

An older child was with his mother, and, I believed, being abused.

The drug addicted and drunken father saw the kids from time to time, and they were very unsafe with him. He was constantly threatening to take the kids back if he got huffy. The mother (of whom the kids were terrified) sometimes insisted on seeing them, and could have claimed them any time. NOBODY had any psychological safety.


The welfare would not intervene, although they were semi involved, despite my taking it higher and higher.


Eventually, I persuaded the child protection assessment people to do a thorough assessment.

They recommended the two kids be removed from the parents legally, and placed with the people who had been caring for them.


Still no action......until one of the children was abused by a friend of the father's...in sight of other people...and FILMED by a security camera.


For some reason, the family were STILL advised to go to family court, after months and months, where the judge said the previous thorough assessment report and its recommendations were out of date (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and they had to go through the entire assessment process again.


Finally, after nearly two years, proper ending.


Except one of the kids was still living in abuse.

It is to weep, but you all know that.