Why This Matters For Families

For the more than half a million children in foster care each year in the United States, placement with kin is consistently associated with greater stability and well-being. Nationally, roughly one‑third of children in foster care are placed with relatives or close family connections, and research shows that these children experience fewer placement disruptions, stronger connections to siblings and culture, and better behavioral and mental health outcomes than children placed with non‑kin foster homes.

But for kin caregivers — grandparents, aunts, uncles, or trusted family friends — placements frequently happen with little warning and minimal preparation. Many caregivers take children into their homes within hours, often while on fixed or limited incomes. Because these family members aren’t already licensed foster parents, they can often struggle with delays in receiving the foster care maintenance payments that other foster parents are afforded. Barely 20% of kin foster parents were receiving foster care maintenance payments (compared to 100% of non-kin foster parents).

Delays in or denial of foster care maintenance payments create immediate financial strain, often forcing families to choose between meeting a child’s basic needs and their own stability.

Implementation Challenge

Kin-specific licensing standards directly address this gap. By allowing approval of relatives to occur quickly and limiting requirements to what is essential for safety and federal compliance, families can begin receiving financial support from day one of placement, rather than waiting weeks or months (or never). This early support is strongly linked to placement stability and reduces the likelihood that children will experience additional moves.

Just as importantly, the standards are designed to reduce harm. Traditional licensing processes have been experienced by many families as invasive or demeaning, particularly for families of color, immigrant families, and low‑income households who are disproportionately represented in kinship care. Plain‑language forms, trauma‑informed assessments, and flexible background‑check pathways help rebuild trust and signal that kin caregivers are valued partners — not problems to be screened out.

Our Approach

Our first challenge was federal regulation, which required child welfare agencies to hold relative foster parents to the same licensing standards as non-relatives. We leveraged user research sprints with families, youth, agencies, and subject matter experts to highlight the many reasons why relatives warrant their own standards.

For example:

While it’s not appropriate to place a foster youth in a strangers living room, it may be safe and acceptable for a teen to sleep on their grandmother’s couch
It may also be appropriate to demand non-relative foster parents have a minimum income, but a grandmother fostering her grandson shouldn’t be left unsupported because she doesn’t make sufficient income thresholds.

Advocacy across the child welfare field successfully achieved a new regulation, allowing states and title IV-E tribes to have kin-specific licensing standards, in September 2023.

Even when agencies recognized the need for kin-specific approval processes, implementation posed significant challenges. Existing statutes, regulations, and agency policies were often deeply intertwined with traditional foster home licensing models, making change complex and slow. Frontline staff needed clarity on what was truly required for safety and compliance, while leadership needed assurance that new approaches would withstand federal review and lawsuits.

Operational barriers were equally significant. Many agencies relied on outdated technology for background checks and registries, faced long delays in fingerprinting results, or lacked clear workflows for approving kin quickly while initiating federal reimbursement steps. Without standardized forms or guidance, approval decisions varied widely, increasing the risk of bias and inconsistency across regions and workers. And with historically low workforces, agencies did not have the capacity to invest time and resources in developing a new process from scratch.

We worked in close partnership with kin caregivers, subject matter experts, and more than 50 child welfare agencies to develop a set of kin‑specific model approval standards and detailed implementation guidance. The work was grounded in extensive research, usability testing, and iterative design.

Key elements of the project included:

Co‑designing standards with kin caregivers, agency staff, and experts across child welfare, law, tribal affairs, pediatrics, and public safety.
Conducting interviews and testing with hundreds of participants across states, territories, and tribes to understand real‑world approval practices and barriers.
Developing a streamlined approval process focused on only two required components: federally compliant background checks and a kinship caregiver assessment that combines caregiver discussion questions with physical home safety considerations and supports.
Creating plain‑language form templates and guidance materials designed to reduce trauma, bias, and administrative burden while supporting staff decision‑making.

We partnered in developing these standards with every willing child welfare organization, creating a coalition that presented one, united front to agencies. Every organization contributed their unique perspectives and relationships.

Throughout the work, we centered equity, trauma‑informed practice, and respect for the dignity of kin caregivers, with particular attention to communities that have been historically marginalized or disproportionately excluded. We also provided dedicated technical assistance to every child welfare agency, ranging from helping draft regulations to testing forms to leading training webinars for staff and community members.

What We Learned

Our research and testing surfaced several consistent insights:

Kin approval processes can be completed quickly—often the same day as placement—without compromising child safety.
Many commonly required licensing steps (such as training, home studies, or medical exams) do not meaningfully improve safety for kin placements and instead create unnecessary delays and inequities.
How agencies communicate about background checks and assessments matters deeply; clear, supportive messaging significantly increases kin engagement and trust.
Providing foster care maintenance payments starting on day one of placement is critical to placement stability and child well-being, even when federal reimbursement is delayed.

Agencies also reported that adopting kin-specific standards can reduce staff workload, speed access to Title IV-E reimbursement, and increase the use of kin placements overall.

Results

Half of the country has gone live with kin-specific licensing so far, with the other half slated to go live by January 2027. This is unlocking $3B in cash payments to relative caregivers every year, encouraging a sharp rise in relative placements, improving relative placement stability, and reducing time in care.