About 127,449 children or 39 percent of all children in foster care in the United States were placed with relatives/kin in 2024. [1] This percentage is at an all-time high. While this progress is encouraging, the metric that is more important to consider is how many children are placed with kin in fully supported licensed homes.
In 2024, about 44 percent of these children - over 55,000 children - were in unlicensed/unapproved homes with relatives/kin. When children are in the legal custody of the child welfare system, and live in the care of unlicensed/unapproved kin, they are subject to all the rules and restrictions of the foster care system, but are not supported with foster care maintenance payments to help meet their needs. Because licensure is tied to FCMP, it is important to license these homes, and thanks to new federal flexibility, we are already seeing more children in relative/kin foster homes supported like other children in foster care.
Foster Care Licensing
Federal requirements have largely left the licensing of foster parents to the title IV-E child welfare agencies. Federal law has long required that Title IV-E agencies create and maintain their own foster care licensing or approval standards. 42 U.S.C. § 671 (a)(10)(A). Jurisdictions vary dramatically in their standards, and their processes and procedures in licensing both non-relatives and relatives/kin.
For decades, a federal regulation was interpreted as dictating that each Title IV-E agency can only have one set of foster care licensing or approval standards that apply equally to kin and non-kin. 45 CFR § 1355.20. However, the licensing of relatives/kin is by its nature different than the licensing of non-relatives. One key difference is that it usually occurs in a different order. For relatives, because they are concerned about the placement of a specific child with them, they often seek licensure after placement. The way the foster care system was set-up and the way it typically works is that foster parents are licensed before any children are placed with them. This reverse order of events impacts the urgency of licensing for relatives.
In September 2023, responding to the need to allow for separate standards for kin/relatives, the U.S. Administration for Children and Families (ACF) issued a final rule that explicitly gives all Title IV-E child welfare agencies the option to use kin-specific foster care licensing or approval standards and encourages them to limit those standards to federal safety requirements. This change is allowing more children to be cared for by those they know and love and be financially supported like children with non-kin foster parents.
The rule is a significant move forward for thousands of children who are placed with kin in foster care and yet do not receive monthly financial assistance to meet their needs, because licensure is tied to monthly support. By allowing tailored licensing or approval standards for relatives and kin, the rule is promoting equity for all children in family foster homes and will prevent children from going into group or institutional placements when they can be placed with loving and supported kin instead. The rule has opened the door for supporting children with kin by encouraging agencies to implement kin-specific standards that do away with stringent requirements that lack a clear nexus to safety.
What the Kin-Specific Licensing Means & Does Not Mean
The 2023 rule does nothing to change state, territorial, and tribal flexibility in creating and maintaining their own foster care licensing or approval standards. 42 U.S.C. § 671 (a)(10)(A).
Standards that bar many kin from becoming licensed or approved – such as not having enough rooms in their homes or misdemeanor criminal charges for writing bad checks – are not federal requirements. Title IV-E agencies have the power to implement standards that omit these nonsensible and socioeconomically biased standards, and ACF is encouraging that they do so.
Despite misimpressions that persist, federal requirements under the new rule remain the same: safety-related, reasonable, and flexible.
Specifically, the 2023 rule:
- Encourages Title IV-E agencies to establish kin-specific licensing or approval standards that are limited to long-standing federal law that requires Title IV-E agencies to:
- Conduct criminal and child abuse background checks under the federal Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act. Under that federal law, if these checks discover that a potential foster parent, whether kin or not, has been convicted of a violent felony (other than physical assault or battery) or a felony against children or a spouse, they are barred from ever being a foster parent. If the checks show that a potential foster parent has been convicted of felony battery or assault or a drug-related felony within the past five years, they are barred from being a foster parent for those five years. 42 U.S.C. § 671(a)(20).
- Align their standards “reasonably in accord with recommended standards of national organizations…including standards related to admission policies, safety, sanitation, and protection of civil rights, and which shall permit use of the reasonable and prudent parenting standard.” 42 U.S.C. § 671 (a)(10)(A).
- Requires Title IV-E agencies to ensure that licensed or approved kin foster family homes receive the same foster care maintenance payments as non-kin foster homes. This does away with the practice in some states of providing less or no financial support to kin who are approved under a different set of standards than non-kin.
Kin-Specific Approval Standards Available to Help Implement the Rule
To help agencies implement this federal rule and ensure that the new kin-specific standards fulfill the long-standing requirement to align with nationally recommended standards, kin-specific approval standards have been developed by a coalition of national nonprofit organizations: A Second Chance, Inc., American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law, Children’s Rights, CWPolicy, Generations United and its Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network: A National Technical Assistance Center, National Association for Regulatory Administration (NARA), National Indian Child Welfare Association, New America’s Resource Family Working Group, and Think of Us.
This work was done in close collaboration with kin caregivers, subject matter experts, and at least 45 Title IV-E child welfare agencies. Please see the Kin-Specific Foster Home Approval: Recommended Standards of National Organizations and related tools housed at grandfamilies.org
The kin-specific standards were further informed by the NARA Model Family Foster Home Licensing Standards, which were designed as part of a multi-year effort between the ABA Center on Children and the Law, Generations United, and the National Association for Regulatory Administration (NARA), under the old requirement of only allowing one set of licensing standards for kin and non-kin. The research conducted as part of that effort is summarized in Improving Foster Care Licensing Standards around the United States: Using Research Findings to Effect Change and was cited in the preamble to the 2023 proposed rule. Both the NARA Model – and the HHS National Model that “heavily relied” on the NARA Model - can and should still be consulted for non-kin standards, as it addresses many of the barriers that all potential foster families face.