Former Emerging Leader Fellow Karissa Phelps and Temple Law Professor Sarah Katz have published a new article in Pennsylvania Bar Association Quarterly discussing kinship care in Pennsylvania.
Nationally, and within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the number of children being raised by grandparents or other relatives has increased over the last two decades—these kinship arrangements include informal family arrangements, formal custody arrangements, or kinship foster care placements. For several decades, federal law has required that child protection authorities consider kin as a placement option first when children are removed from their parents and placed in foster care. And with good reason: social science research shows that out-comes are better for children who are placed with kin than those placed in foster care with strangers. Such placements reduce the trauma children experience as a result of child protection system involvement and increase child well-being.
