When is kinship care a bad idea?

I'm an adoption and foster care social worker and I dance this line all of the time.

Let me first say that what happened in this article, the death of a child at the hands of a foster parent has happened 3 times in my state in the last five years....none of them were related to the child. So the kinship care argument has nothing to do with the problem of unstable violent people getting children.

But there is a problem with the belief that kinship care is always blanket best. I will say this before I am attacked.

In the cases where a SUITABLE family member can be found who has the ability and the desire to care for the child AND protect them from further trauma AND EXPOSURE TO THE BIRTH PARENTS....I say do it...Most of my adoptions this year have been grandparent or aunt/uncle adoptions.

However, there have been cases where I have been forced by the courts to place a child with a grandparent who raised crack head, abusive parent...along with incarcerated uncles, and aunts that can't hold down jobs......after a while it is not a good tree with many bad apples, it is a BAD tree...and they should not be given the next generation to screw up.

Also, birth family does not always protect the children from further contact....when they adopt they are saying "my child, (niece, nephew...whatever) is not welcome in my home for holidays, birthdays, whatever until this child reaches 18." easy to say when you're angry and fed up.....BUT when the birth parents get clean for a booming 3 months and you start thinking "Oh..they've changed...this is good..." because you love that person...you open the door again...BOOM relaspes...kid is hurt and rejected ALL over again.

No in cases of mental illness, or simple neglect, the court will often not issue a no-contact order. When there is no threat to the child by continued contact, I think it should be allowed and it is...I know adoptive parents who ignore them all the time and in these cases...where there has been no abuse, and the presence of the birth parent is not harmful...I pretend I don't notice.

No case is exactly the same.

DHS often does not run a deep check and do a good report on people who are relatives......3 times this year alone I have started adoption processes on people who NEVER should have had the children in the first place......We are talking FELONIES...recent (within 5 years) sometimes violent felonies...in one case...Grandpa was still in prison at the time of the assessment...so here is the deal..do I pull a child from his grandmother and the home he has been in for 3 years (since birth) of course not....but DHS NEVER should have allowed the child into the home of a repeated felon...they didn't check...he was a relative and this was an emergency placement....trouble is these placements often become forever and I don't think a child should be placed overnight in a home we wouldn't consider for adoption....DHS does this all time with relatives.

So, kinship care is a bad idea when the relatives are not suitable, when they don't meet the same criteria we'd ask of a foster parent, when they have criminal records (recent and serious), when they will not be able to protect the child from further trauma, when they knew there was a problem but never once came forward on behalf of the child.......

But, if they are safe and suitable, it is the best thing!

There are several possible issues that can come up with kinship care. Each of these is a case by case basis, and don't imply that it is in general a bad or good idea. These are just what I have seen in my own experience.

- One problem that CPS people often see with Kinship care is that the family caring for the child allow unregulated contact between the abusive parent and the child. In one case I know of, the child was placed with a grandparent, and then the mother moved into with the grandparent in direct defiance of the court order.

- Another problem is that (where I live) if a child is given to family, that family receives less support from the state. Since it isn't officially 'foster care', many of the benefits and support foster parents receive do not apply. For example, some foster parents get daycare support, but children in kinship care are not eligible. This makes it very hard on the family.

- Finally, I have seen this be a big 'wedge' between family members. (This is the flip side of the first issue above.) The birth mother may feel angry toward the family member who has custody, especially if that family member adheres to the rules laid down by the courts and CPS. I have seen birth mothers acuse family members of abuse and neglect, and even make physical threats when the family member refused to violate the rules and give them more contact.

Edit - jm1970 has it right.

Didn't you ask this question before? For certain there was a link to the same article.

There are many cases where kinship care is a bad idea. If the mother is unable to care for the child, social workers really need to look at the family as a whole and question whether it was her interaction with this family that caused her to become a drug addict or alcoholic or otherwise unable to care for the child. For instance, my one Uncle would be a horrible choice for kinship care as he is mentally abusive (doing exactly what HIS father did). Fortunately, the kids did not succumb to drinking or drugs as a means to deal with the resultant depression, but that would be a common response.

I know of a family where the grandfather got custody of the daughter's 2 children, then as soon as he got custody, he sent them home with her. Not only were the kids sexually molested again (raped and sodimized, ages 7 & 5), they were being so brutalized that the neighbors had called about the screams and police themselves were removing them and taking the woman's boyfriend from the house within hours. The grandpa said he didn't think it had happened, and since he has heart problems, he's somehow kept out of jail. I don't think the daughter went to jail either, however, the boyfriend did. I know where they were when it happened, and it was only by the grace of God that someone heard and called. These 2 little girls will be hurt forever, both physically and mentally. I've seen another case similar, and I'm finding that it usually happens (not always) where the custodial parent's parents are getting the kids that harm comes again. Basically, it's as if they raised the parents, and if they didn't do such a good job that the grandkids are getting put into foster care, why should they get a chance to harm another generation.

Does any child deserve to grow up with parents who are abusive toward them,my answer to that is No. People who are abusive and abuse can take many forms,people who are like that do not deserve to have children.If people like that have children and are abusive towards them and the children are taken away and looked after by other family members there is always going to be the chance that the bio parents will still be a part of their lives.When a child is born they are born Innocent if allowed to grow up in abuse there is every chance that they will grow up and be abusive themselves because to them the way they were brought up was natural.Children need to be protected from abuse and if it means putting them up for adoption then that's what needs to happen so that they can be taken away as far as possible from that abuse and have a chance at growing up as a normal person. I know I was adopted. Thankfully I have my own family now and am also a grandfather and thankfully normal.

I think that kinship care potientials should have to meet all of the qualifications that adoptive/foster parents should meet. Exactly as it's been said above me, is it a good tree with bad apples or a bad tree?

As a side note, I wonder about this whenever someone posts that they're considering adoption for their child and they receive many responses about kinship care and choosing to parenting their child. Maybe they've considered it and because of an abusive and toxic family unit, decided against it.

Hi Robin,

As an adult survivor, i am a member of a support group. What i hear over and over again is that the whole family unit is dysfunctional. And that is the reason the abuse is allowed to go on for years. Meaning most times, other family members knew of the abuse and turned a blind eye.

I support kinship care but in my case it would not have worked. Abuse is a way of life in my family tree. Its the norm. I stood up to the abuse and was exiled from my family for it. You see being healthy, I'm the crazy one in my family and extended family. Its really hard to stop the abuse when you don't see anything wrong with it.

The problem I see with kinship care is it offers no permanence for children. In some instances the irresponsible parents are still coming in and out of a child's life. This can become emotionally upsetting for younger children and is too much like the instability of foster care.

I find it hard to believe that there were no signs this aunt was unstable. It is disturbing that some social workers will look past certain things just to keep a child with family. When the dysfunction is rampant in a family no child should be allowed to enter care with said family.

ETA:

JM 1970 had the best answer based on fact.

kinship care is not always a bad idea, there will always be something bad that comes from a situation. just because one bad thing happened doesn't mean that it would happen everytime. fostering children should be taken more seriously, because foster care means you're trying to get them out of a bad situation into a good one. and when adoption is a better idea for a child is if they are really little, too little to understand what's going on. i think if they were living there life with someone that they've always known it would be a lot easier for them later on. and also, i think kids who are emotionally unstable shouldn't be passed around and around to different foster homes.. i think it would be a lot easier to be more stable in an adoptive family rather than different foster parents all the time

Of course when abuse is taking place, kinship care is a bad idea. The child's welfare, should be paramount.

In my case the judge thought it ok for a 'kin' to adopt me, a kin raised in the same house as my mother.

So the abuse continued. ...some dumb judges out there.

Also agree with open adoptions...and think there should be legal recourse for the birth parents, when the 'open' is 'closed' without good reason.

Adoption maybe better for some children, pity they loose their 'rights' when adopted though (in the USA) Adoption is still flawed, and needs to be rectified. Foster children, have more rights than adopted.