Kinship Diversion Resources

Chart summarizing court cases related to hidden foster care and kinship diversion. Last updated February 2025.

Managed by the national Coalition to End Hidden Foster Care, this website explains how out-of-court family separations can be harmful to children, parents, and caregivers. The site contains links to resources on hidden foster care as well as news and personal stories from families impacted. The site also has an option for families who are impacted to share their story or get involved in the Coalition.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation has released its third brief in a five-part series  - Family Ties: Analysis from a State-By-State Survey of Kinship Care Policies - based on survey data collected in 2022 for the AECF by Child Trends.  This brief,  New Insights on State Kinship Diversion Policies, examines survey data related to state’s policies for creating, overseeing and tracking diversion arrangements and the resources made available for children and kinship caregivers in diversion arrangements.

Child Trends brief that uses field work, stakeholder interviews, administrative data reviews, and a digital survey tool to examine the use of kinship diversion across child welfare agencies. It finds that while kinship diversion is the most common out-of-home placement, few child welfare jurisdictions collect data on diversion, making it challenging to gauge its effectiveness or understand the experiences of the children involved. Recommendations include clear practice guidelines and collection of accurate, consistent, child-level information.

Article by Ali Caliendo from First Focus' Big Ideas 2023 that examines various out-of-home kinship care arrangements and the different issues they present. The article argues that a development of a standardized framework to discuss kinship care is long overdue in the child welfare field in the context of child welfare policy and practice. Recommendations include requiring child welfare systems to collect and report data based on the universal nonparental family types touching the child welfare system; requiring states to outline how kinship care will be used as part of a state FFPSA prevention plan; further delinking kinship resources from foster care status, and recognizing the need for independent kinship navigator programs.