Study: More & More Children are Being Raised by Family and Friends

Number of Children Raised by Relatives, Family Friends Continues to Climb, Report Finds
May 29, 2012

Kinship care, or the practice of children living with adults other than their biological parents for any period of time, is a part of the human experience that dates back thousands of years (remember Moses?).  New attention, however, is being paid to kinship care as it exists in the U.S. today.   According to a recent study, almost three million children currently live with relatives/friends in the United States.  About 25 percent of children in foster care (about 100,000) live with relatives and about 400,000 children avoided foster care because of relative placement. 

Almost ten percent of children live with relatives/friends for some period of time and twenty percent of black children do.   The study also argued that relative placement is better for children regardless of label (but it did not necessarily make the "better" assertion in direct comparison to anything) because kin care minimizes shock and adjustment difficulties for children moving from home.

In Florida, about four percent of all children in the state are in some type of kincare which is consistent with national figures however, 43 percent of all children in foster care in the Sunshine State are in “state-supervised kinship foster care” which is the second-highest percentage in the country (Hawai’i is at 46 percent).  

*The national percentage of children in the foster care system living with relatives is 26 percent.

The study also cites data from the Census Bureau that indicates that relative caregiver situations are at-risk of being poorer, isolated, older, under educated and underemployed than in situations where even just one of parent is present.  

 To read the entire study and learn more about kinship care, please click on this urlink for more.