Licensing Reforms Benefit Children and Families in Kinship Care

In the past year, 16 states and tribes have revised their fos­ter care licens­ing require­ments to improve sup­port for kin­ship care­givers and the chil­dren placed with them.

These juris­dic­tions are the first to cre­ate and imple­ment kin-spe­cif­ic licens­ing rules since the Admin­is­tra­tion for Chil­dren and Fam­i­lies allowed states and tribes to sim­pli­fy the path­way to approval, which occurred in 2023. As a result, more kin­ship care­givers may become licensed and gain access to finan­cial assis­tance and vital sup­port services.

“The rapid uptake of these stan­dards shows how ready and eager juris­dic­tions are for this flex­i­bil­i­ty to help sup­port their goals of child wel­fare trans­for­ma­tion through a kin-first cul­ture,” said Ana Bel­tran, direc­tor of the Grand­fam­i­lies & Kin­ship Sup­port Net­work at Gen­er­a­tions Unit­ed, a leader among kin­ship orga­ni­za­tions devel­op­ing best prac­tices and resources to help states adapt the fed­er­al rule.

How Licens­ing Deter­mines Access to Fos­ter Care Resources

Licens­ing is the key to obtain­ing fos­ter care finan­cial assis­tance and sup­port ser­vices, includ­ing fed­er­al­ly fund­ed resources dis­trib­uted by states. In 2022, only 13 states made month­ly fos­ter care pay­ments avail­able to unli­censed kin­ship care­givers, while most states con­sid­ered licensed care­givers eli­gi­ble for sup­port, accord­ing to a sur­vey by the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion.

Most kin­ship care­givers are unli­censed because they don’t meet local­ly set stan­dards for fos­ter care provider age, income or home size. For exam­ple, a grand­moth­er with a fixed income could be denied a license and assis­tance in some states.

“Fam­i­lies and oth­ers with long­stand­ing rela­tion­ships can pro­vide healthy, sup­port­ive cul­tur­al and com­mu­ni­ty bonds that help chil­dren and youth thrive,” said Sarah Mor­ris-Comp­ton, a senior asso­ciate with the Casey Foundation’s Fam­i­ly Well-Being Strat­e­gy Group. ​“Now, with the revised licens­ing stan­dards, they will also receive the resources they need to house, feed, clothe and pro­vide close rela­tion­ships for these young people.”

Remov­ing Bar­ri­ers, Pri­or­i­tiz­ing Kin and Com­mu­ni­ty Connections

By elim­i­nat­ing lay­ers of local require­ments for the care­givers and their homes — all while main­tain­ing fed­er­al­ly man­dat­ed back­ground and safe­ty checks — child wel­fare agen­cies aim to make it eas­i­er and faster to place chil­dren in secure, lov­ing homes with rel­a­tives and oth­er adults who know them.

Chil­dren ben­e­fit when placed with their extend­ed fam­i­lies or adult friends in their com­mu­ni­ties where they feel a sense of belong­ing, research shows. These chil­dren are more like­ly to feel loved and accept­ed com­pared to chil­dren placed in fos­ter homes with unfa­mil­iar care­givers or in insti­tu­tion­al set­tings. At the same time, kin place­ments reduce both the like­li­hood that a child is moved from place­ment to place­ment and their time spent in fos­ter care. Such place­ments also improve a child’s chances of exit­ing fos­ter care hav­ing forged a per­ma­nent rela­tion­ship with a car­ing adult.

Ensur­ing Mary­land Youth Have Per­ma­nent Rela­tion­ships With Car­ing Adults 

These new ​“kin-spe­cif­ic” approval path­ways and stan­dards are as var­ied as the juris­dic­tions cre­at­ing them. Some sys­tems have revised their rules so that, once a child is placed in a home, their kin­ship care­givers can begin receive assis­tance right away — even before the lengthy licens­ing process runs its full course. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant because a child’s ini­tial place­ment in fos­ter care is a sig­nif­i­cant pre­dic­tor of their future well-being and success. 

Though their approach­es may dif­fer, states lead­ing the way with licens­ing reforms share the end goal, which is to strength­en strate­gies so that chil­dren and youth in fos­ter care are forg­ing per­ma­nent rela­tion­ships. Mary­land is one of these states, and about 28% of its fos­ter care pop­u­la­tion are in kin place­ments today.

With sup­port from the Casey Foun­da­tion, Maryland’s Depart­ment of Human Ser­vices (DHS) intro­duced stream­lined licens­ing in Decem­ber 2024 as part of a larg­er effort to make kin place­ments the pre­ferred option for chil­dren who can­not stay in their orig­i­nal home. This statewide shift in phi­los­o­phy, pol­i­cy and prac­tice — an ini­tia­tive called Fam­i­ly Mat­ters — is designed to ensure that young peo­ple and their fam­i­lies have access to the con­nec­tions and resources they need to thrive.

Law­mak­ers laid ground­work for Fam­i­ly Mat­ters by expand­ing the state’s def­i­n­i­tion of kin to include not just blood rel­a­tives but also adult fam­i­ly friends whom a child knows and trusts.

Mary­land DHS is also tak­ing kin­ship care best prac­tices first adopt­ed in Bal­ti­more City and imple­ment­ed these prac­tices statewide. DHS offi­cials antic­i­pate that this approach will help its 23 coun­ties as well as Bal­ti­more — the state’s largest city — recruit, license and sup­port more kin caregivers.

“I am proud that we were able to remove bar­ri­ers and ensure chil­dren are able to be placed with their rel­a­tives and kin,” said Dr. Alger Studstill, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Social Ser­vices Admin­is­tra­tion for Mary­land DHS.