Across the nation, 4% of all kids — more than 2.65 million children — are in kinship care. In this arrangement, relatives raise kids when their parents cannot care for them.
There are three general and sometimes overlapping categories of kinship care. These categories are: 1) private or informal care, where families make arrangements with or without legal recognition of a caregiver’s status; 2) diversion kinship care, where children who have come to the attention of child welfare agencies end up living with a relative or close friend of the family. and 3) licensed or unlicensed kinship care, where kids live with relatives but remain in legal custody of the state.
When a child who has experienced trauma melts down emotionally, kin and foster caregivers can struggle to identify triggers and help them calm down. The ramifications of this can be devastating. Enter a powerful new tool, Trauma Systems Therapy for Foster Care (TST-FC), that aims to help caregivers meet the needs of kids and teenagers who have experienced trauma.
Thanks to a new how-to guide on on kinship care, child welfare practitioners can get step-by-step guidance on how to ensure more children are placed with relatives when their parents cannot care for them.
In 2003, Colorado’s Division of Child Welfare placed 1,483 children in residential treatment centers. By 2016, this figure dropped 65% to 526, and the number of kinship placements in Colorado nearly doubled, from 1,308 to 2,401. The state’s dramatic shift toward kinship care is rooted in research and the result of an intensive consulting engagement the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
Trauma Systems Therapy for Foster Care is a powerful new training curriculum designed to enhance foster parents’ understanding of how trauma affects children’s behavior. It's available for any agency to download and implement for free.
Casey’s Lisa Hamilton talks with Rafael López about America’s child welfare system. Their conversation explores the system today, how it works and where it falls short. López also shares ideas aimed at transforming the system to better serve children and families in crisis.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation has developed a series of facilitator guides dedicated to teaching caregivers about Trauma Systems Therapy for Foster Care. This guide, devoted to module one, helps trainers explain trauma and its affects on children and teens.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation has developed a series of facilitator guides dedicated to teaching caregivers about Trauma Systems Therapy for Foster Care. This guide, devoted to module two, reviews strategies that caregivers can use to help promote healing in children with trauma histories.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation has developed a series of facilitator guides dedicated to teaching caregivers about Trauma Systems Therapy for Foster Care. This guide, devoted to module three, helps instructors arm foster families with important skills and strategies for coping with difficult behavior.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation has developed a series of facilitator guides dedicated to teaching caregivers about Trauma Systems Therapy for Foster Care. This guide, devoted to module four, helps instructors educate caregivers on the importance of providing children with signals of safety.
This guide, part of the Trauma Systems Therapy for Foster Children training curriculum, serves as a foster parent's go-to resource on caring for children whose lives have been impacted by trauma. Caregivers can use to this booklet to extend their learning, access tips and tools, and revisit important strategies designed to help these children heal.
