What Does The Child Welfare System Mean By “Kinship Care”?

This factsheet is designed to assist kin caregivers in working effectively with the child welfare system. It covers various reasons, such as when a child cannot remain safely at home due to a report of child abuse or neglect, or when the child is arrested. Kinship care refers to the care provided by family members or close family friends, sometimes known as “non-relative”. Children may come to live with their grandparents or other relatives in various ways, some of which involve a child welfare agency.

There are different types of kinship care, including private, voluntary, and formal care. Informal kinship care occurs when family members or friends assume care of a child. Kinship care includes the full-time care of a child by relatives or other adults who have a bond with the child. The National Convening on Kinship Care reflected a collective vision for a child welfare system that supports and prioritizes kinship care, recognizing its importance.

Kinship care can occur with or without the involvement of a child welfare agency, depending on the situation. In South Carolina, kinship care occurs when the caretaker is unable to meet basic needs such as food, shelter, education, healthcare, and safety. This factsheet addresses various topics relevant for kin caregivers, including different types of kinship care, how and when the child is born, and the importance of kinship care in meeting the needs of children and youth involved in the child welfare system.

What is a kinship in DCS?

Formal kinship care is when a judge places a child in the state’s custody and the Department of Child Safety places them with a kinship caregiver. These caregivers must follow guidelines set by the DCS regarding education, medical needs, discipline, and parent-child contact. Services provided by the DCS include medical insurance, behavioral health services, and reimbursement at an unlicensed rate. Caregivers can also become licensed for their children.

What is a kinship system?

Social relationships within a culture are defined as the interconnectedness of related individuals, whereby reciprocal obligations are defined and regulated.

What is the purpose of a kinship system?

Kinship is a fundamental organizing principle in societies, establishing relationships and bonds between individuals and groups. It contributes to the structure and cohesion of social units like families, clans, or tribes, maintaining unity, harmony, and cooperation. Kinship rules outline communication, interactions, and mutual support within families and extended networks. It determines rights and obligations within families and marriages, defining roles and responsibilities based on kinship positions.

Kinship provides a framework for tracing ancestry and establishing connections between generations, allowing individuals to understand their lineage, family history, and cultural heritage. It contributes to the formation of social identity and a sense of belonging, fostering shared traditions, customs, and values. Kinship facilitates social integration by connecting individuals to broader social networks, enabling people to develop relationships beyond their immediate families. However, kinship can also pose challenges, such as conflict, power imbalance, neglect, and abuse, both physically and emotionally.

What are the rules of kinship?

In some societies, excessive mutual interaction between relatives is culturally prohibited, known as avoidance. This behavior is referred to as teknonymy, which was first mentioned by Tylor. It involves avoiding direct communication, addressing each other directly, and not taking names. The rules of kinship play a crucial role in understanding the kinship system and creating special groups of kin, such as families, extended families, and clans.

They define the acceptable role of relationships and guide interactions among members of the social group, regulating an individual’s social life. Avoidance relationships are mainly found between men and their daughter-in-law, women and their son-in-law, and women and their husband’s elder brother.

What are the three types of kinship?

Kinship can be classified into three principal categories: consanguineal, affinal, and social.

What does the kinship system do?

The Aboriginal social organization in Central Australia has a complex kinship system that determines how people relate to each other and their roles, rights, responsibilities, and obligations. This system determines suitable marriage partners, funeral roles, everyday behavior patterns, and traditional land ownership groupings. However, there is an increasing number of ‘wrong skin’ marriages, where people who would traditionally be prevented from marrying become partners.

This has led to families trying to accommodate the contradictions it presents for the kinship system and wider relationships. Other rules of the system are more enduring, such as avoidance relationships between mother-in-law and son-in-law, which require social distance and are influenced by signals or codes. While aspects of this system differ between regions, there are more similarities than differences in the kinship system.

What is the problem of kinship?

Kinship/grandfamilies often face legal issues, as they lack automatic legal rights and responsibilities for their children. Obtaining legal relationships with children, such as adoption, legal custody, or guardianship, can be expensive and time-consuming, and may limit caregivers’ ability to access services on their behalf. The Network hosted a webinar on the array of legal relationships available to families, and a recording and associated resources are available on the webpage.

Financial assistance for additional children in the household is often inadequate and inequitable. Children in foster care with unrelated caregivers receive monthly maintenance payments, while children in care of kin/grandfamily caregivers do not. They are often referred to child-only Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) grants, which are typically smaller than foster care maintenance payments and only increase incrementally for each child. Access issues and smaller grants are common issues in obtaining these grants.

What is another name for kinship care?

Kinship care refers to the arrangement where families raise their relative’s children, often referred to as “grandfamilies”, “second-time parents”, or “relatives as parents”. This arrangement helps children through the experience of being out of the parental home, maintaining family, cultural, or community ties. Kinship care is the oldest form of family preservation and an important safety net for children whose parents are either unable or unwilling to care for them.

Reasons for kinship care can include parental incarceration, death, mental or physical illness, substance abuse, and neglect and abuse by parents. Recent increases in kinship care may be attributed to the recession, as parents turn to grandparent’s homes due to job or financial loss.

What are the 4 principles of kinship?

Anthropologists categorize kinship connections in societies into four main rules: bilateral, unilineal, ambilineal, and double descent. Bilateral descent involves an individual affiliating equally with relatives on their father’s and mother’s sides, such as the Yakurr of Nigeria. Unilineal rules are divided into two categories: patrilineal (male) and matrilineal (female), with most societies being patrilineal. Examples of matrilineal systems include the Nyakyusa of Tanzania and the Nair of India.

Ambilineal rule involves an individual affiliating with relatives through their father’s or mother’s line, with some people choosing which side they want to affiliate to. The Samoans of the South Pacific are an excellent example of an ambilineal society. Double descent refers to societies where both patrilineal and matrilineal descent groups are recognized, with individuals in these societies being recognized as part of multiple descent groups.

Another type of descent group is a social group whose members discuss common ancestry. In a unilineal society, the descent of an individual is reckoned either from the mother’s or father’s line of descent. Matrilineal descent is based on relationship to females of the family line, with children not being recognized with their father’s family but seen as a member of their mother’s family’s line. In contrast, with patrilineal descent, individuals belong to their father’s descent group, with children recognized as members of their father’s family.

In conclusion, kinship connections are crucial in many societies, and there are four main categories of rules of descent: bilateral, unilineal, ambilineal, and double descent.

What is kinship and how does it work?

The concept of kinship encompasses ancestral ties, whereby relationships may exist between individuals who are not aware of one another. In contrast, the formation of family is based on the principles of ancestry, marriage, or adoption, which enables people to engage in shared experiences.

What is kinship care in the UK?

This page explains the law surrounding a family and friends care arrangement, also known as kinship care, where a child cannot be cared for by their parents or another person with parental responsibility. The arrangement can be private or arise from children’s services involvement. If a private arrangement exists between the parent/person with parental responsibility and a close relative, no further action is required.

A close relative can be a grandparent, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, or step-parent. Local authorities are responsible for assessing the suitability of a family and friends carer and providing necessary support.