Since federal law changed in 1997 to incentivize termination of parental rights and adoption, two million children have had their legal relationship with their families terminated by courts across the United States, despite the benefits and desire of many families to maintain connections. For children who need to be separated from their families, far too few are placed with family, despite clear evidence of more positive outcomes for children placed with kin instead of with strangers.
The Problem
Rather than preventing children from languishing in foster care, strict termination timelines have resulted in a generation of “legal orphans,” youth who age out of the foster system with no home or family ties.
Black children are 2.4 times more likely to have their parents' rights terminated than White children nationwide. In Wisconsin, New Jersey, Illinois, New York, Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, and Wyoming, Black children are at least four times more likely to have their ties to their parents permanently cut off.
Only one third of children determined to need foster placements are housed with kin. Compared to children in the general foster care population, children in kinship foster care are better able to adjust to their new environment and are less likely to experience school disruptions and mental health challenges. Children in kinship foster care move less frequently than peers in non-family foster placements, and are more likely to stay with siblings and maintain lifelong connections with family.
Kinship caregivers currently struggle to access financial and social supports: fewer than 12 percent receive help from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), although nearly all are eligible. Less than one third receive training and even fewer receive support services such as peer support groups (9 percent) and respite care (4 percent). Only 22 percent receive help obtaining Medicaid for children in their care, compared to 54 percent of non-relative foster caregivers.
The Solutions
1. Protect children’s rights to lifelong family connections and end federal incentives that favor adoption over other permanency outcomes.
Raise the standard required of child welfare agencies to prevent separation of families and to reunify families they have separated from “reasonable efforts” to the Indian Child Welfare Act standard of “active efforts,” provide a definition of active efforts, and allow families to sue to have the right to these efforts enforced.
Promote kin guardianship and custody over Termination of Parental Rights and adoption by strangers, and amend financial incentives in ASFA to support all forms of permanency, including reunification and guardianship.
Remove arbitrary deadlines favoring termination of children’s rights to their parents and expedited timelines based on a child’s age, and set strict limits on when the government can initiate termination proceedings in ASFA.
2. Make kinship foster care the default placement for children with court-ordered removals from their homes and support maintaining ties to their parents.
Require a presumption in favor of kinship foster care and active efforts to place and maintain children with kin, and increase federal and state financial incentives that promote kinship foster care over placement with strangers.
Eliminate barriers to kinship licensing, including minor criminal records and past allegations of neglect.
End the binary that pits kin caregivers against parents by permitting kin caregivers and the children in their care to safely maintain relationships (and, where applicable, co-living arrangements) with parents.