When a parent no longer is able to care for a child, foster care is the usual recourse. But for some kids, the care of close relatives is another option. The Kinship Permanency Incentive Program was created to support and encourage such care and was funded in part by the state. Ohio Department of Job and Family Services Director Michael Colbert discusses Ohio's proposed budget that eliminates this program. Folks who have benefited from kinship care funding and those who help manage the programs in Central Ohio speak about the importance of kin caregivers, with Public Children Services Association of Ohio Executive Director Crystal Ward Allen, Kinship Caregiver Martha Renda, and Ashtabula County Community Service Coordinator Kathryn Whittington.
Related item:
Kinship Care: Supporting Those Who Raise Our Children - 2005 study (PDF, 390k)
- Kinship care allows kids to maintain connections with family members, traditions
- Conservative estimates suggest that if even half of the two million children being raised by relatives without parents in the home were to enter the foster care system, it would cost taxpayers $6.5 billion a year.
- Challenge for Kinship Care: affordable housing
- Benefits: better school success, healthier children