The Problem with Kinship Care

Quillette ^ | December 12, 2020 | Naomi Schaefer Riley

[karpov]

Thanks, but no thanks. That was the message that aspiring foster parents got this fall when they sent inquiries offering their services to the New Jersey Department of Children and Families. According to an automatic email reply from Dawn Marlow, administrator for the Office of Resource Families, the state is not accepting applications from any foster parents except those who are willing to take care of children with “complex developmental or medical needs.” How is it that states from Georgia to Michigan are struggling to find enough qualified foster homes to take in children—especially during a pandemic when many homes have closed and recruitment is hard—but New Jersey is doing just fine? The letter explains that: “In New Jersey, the number of youth in foster care continues to be reduced each year because we are focusing first on kinship placements.”

It’s true that the state has reduced the number of kids in foster care by two-thirds since 2003, from 13,000 to 4,000. But there are only about 1,700 kids who are being officially removed from their homes and cared for by relatives now (compared to 2,000 in non-relative homes). In other words, according to the state’s numbers, state-sanctioned kinship care can hardly be the real reason for this dramatic drop. What happened to the other 7,300 kids who would have been in foster care? If the state’s account of things is correct and kinship is the reason behind the drop, then they are in some kind of unofficial kinship care, not being monitored or even counted by officials.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

"complex developmental … needs"

Translation: juvenile delinquent with raging temper.

[ronnie raygun]

It takes a village give them all to hillary

[Hardastarboard]

Who will end up dying in an armed robbery or from a drug overdose before reaching 30 after costing society untold pain and millions of dollars.

[MissEdie]

A few years ago there was an explosion of AA foster parents who took children from the state of Texas. Not sure of what all was going on there, every one of these kids offered bizarre stories of abuse and neglect. I asked one of the foster parents why they were doing it and they told me it was the easiest way they could think of to get $5000 a month! They got money from the state of South Carolina and the state of Texas. All of the children were on Medicaid, all in Special Education. One woman I know “fostered” 5 of these kids. She would make the oldest child take care of the younger ones, and she would go shopping every weekend spending some of her $25,000 a month. One of her first purchases was a new Mercedes.

[ZOOKER]

I really don’t like the places where my brain goes sometimes.
7300 children just sort of disappeared? “Kinship placement” you say, but it’s undocumented, just a guess? So no one actually had to prove they were related, right?

[Governor Dinwiddie]

Perfect summary!