Kinship Month!

September is Kinship Care Month! Do you know what kinship is? Here’s a fun way to visualize it - Are you related to or have a close relationship with a child who needs a placement in foster care? If the answer is yes, you would qualify as a kinship caregiver. This is a unique and incredibly challenging role, largely due to the previous relationship with the child and their family. It takes a big heart and strong boundaries to be a placement for a child, you know, while their family navigates the child welfare system (foster care). 

In Michigan, the definition of kinship has recently been expanded to include anyone with a prior relationship to the child. This could be immediate family, extended family, siblings, friends, teachers, church members, and others who may want to take the child or children into their home if they cannot remain with their family of origin. According to the Michigan State University Kinship Care Resource Center, Approximately 36% of children in the foster care system are currently placed in kinship placements. Kinship placements do have to undergo a home study and a background check before the child or children are placed with them. 

Here at CASA, we aim to meet people wherever they are. Physically, we meet children wherever they are currently living. The process for how CASA works with children in kinship placements is similar to how we work with children in other placements. The CASA Advocate meets with the child where they are living and gets to know them. CASA Advocates also get to know and work with the adults who are caring for the child.  One big difference with how CASA interacts with Kinship placements can sometimes be how we support the family in navigating their new dynamic. Taking a child into your home is a huge responsibility, and doing them when you are connected to the whole family can make boundaries hard. In 2023, our program specifically served 20 children in kinship placements! 

We would like to finish with a conversation we had with a kinship placement on one of our cases. CASA was working with a teenager through multiple worker changes and case disruptions. Relative providers expressed that they so greatly appreciate the CASA volunteer and they feel like they had been such a strong advocate for the child and their best interest. They expressed they felt better able to be there for the child with CASA “having their back”. The child has a picture of them, the relative placement, and the CASA advocate from their birthday that they keep on the fridge as they say it is such a happy memory with people who care about the child. The CASA child also stated that the Volunteer has been the only person who has been there for them outside of their relative placement through all the hard parts of this case. They expressed that whenever something big happens in their life that they want to share with someone the first person she is most excited to share her news with is her CASA. The child further expressed that her CASA “makes them feel good about themselves.” 

Further Reading/Sources
Michigan Kinship Care Rule
MSU Kinship Resource