1. Kinship Families are the most desirable homes for children who cannot live with their parents.
“Kinship care represents the most desirable out-of-home placement option for children who cannot live with their parents. It offers family preservation and the greatest level of stability by allowing children to maintain their sense of belonging. It enhances their ability to identify with their family’s culture traditions.”- ODJFS Fact Sheet 12/07
2. Kinship Care is a significant financial savings to the community.
- Ohio spent $154,519,374.44 in foster care and adoption services in 2003(MIS 2003)
-The minimum payment per day per foster care child is $9.00. The maximum payment per day per foster care child is $118.00. This totals a monthly cost range of $270-$3540 per child!
3. Kinship Caregivers protect their relatives from the foster care system and protect the foster care system for having and unmanageable service demand.
- There are approximately 86,000 relatives caring for children in Ohio. If each family placed one relative child in the care of children’s services there would be five times the amount of children in foster care as there are today (US Census, FACSIS).
4. Many Kinship Caregivers have limited financial resources
- Fifty-one percent of Ohio grandparents live in households with incomes of less than $30,000. Forty-five percent of Ohio grandparents are currently employed; 22 percent are retired, disabled, or unemployed and 33 percent say they are "keeping house." Fifty-five percent of the caregivers are receiving OWF; the majority of caregivers are low income and single parent households. (Wright State Kinship Caregiver Coalition).
5. Kinship Caregivers face many challenges as surrogate parents.
-Accepting a relative or kin child is no small task. Many caregivers are forced to move into larger homes, purchase furniture, clothing, and food items for an unexpected child. Many kinship children face the same issues that traditional foster children face: grief and loss of their parents, past physical or emotional abuse, deficits in education, health and developmental problems, mental health diagnosis’s and difficulty adjusting to their new family circumstances.
-Kinship caregivers often change major roles in their lives to adjust to the needs of the children. Caregivers may begin working after retirement or reduce their work hours for childcare. They may deny themselves health care in order to cover the children placed with them. They may experience family turmoil from intervening in “family business.” They may lose friends or other supports as their role has changed from an independent adult to a new parent. These are just some of the unseen costs these brave families face.
