General Kinship Publications

Report by the National Conference of State Legislatures highlighting state policies regarding kinship care. The report explains the benefits of kinship care, shares state-by-state data about kinship placement, and gives examples of state laws on strategies inlcuding defining kinship providers, identifying kin and prioritizing kinship placements, reducing red tape for kin-specific licensure, providing supportive services and assistance to kinship caregivers, and ensuring long-term stability. 

This U.S. Government Accountability Office report describes the characteristics of kinship families, how their challenges may have changed since the COVID-19 pandemic, the resources they are accessing, and how the federal government primarily supports them. 

Kin caregivers often need legal support to navigate the child welfare system and access services for children in their care. There are many helpful models of providing legal assistance to kin caregivers around the country. This resource produced by the ABA Center on Children and the Law and the Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network summarizes those models and provides profiles of organizations doing good work. The goal is to provide replicable ideas to others wanting to provide supportive legal assistance to kinship families in their communities. See presentation slides from the 2025 Generations United Conference here.

The Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network produced this resource to offer service providers in public, private, nonprofit, and community-based organizations basic information about federal programs that can be used to finance kinship services and programs. Information includes which federal agency administers the funding source, services the funding source can finance, and basic eligibility information. This funding primer is not intended to be an in-depth explanation of each source but, rather, a high-level overview that can be used to aid further research.

For more detail on specific types of funding, view the pages for:

• Discretionary Grants
• Entitlements
• Block Grants
• Loans/Loan Guarantees
• In-Kind Support

Series of resources based on a comprehensive survey of kinship care policies that identifies increasing efforts by states to promote kinship care and support kinship caregivers of children and youth who are known to the child welfare system.

The series includes an Executive Summary, and briefs describing:

• 1: Policies that support licensure of kinship foster parents;
• 2: Policies that affect unlicensed kinship caregivers;
• 3: Policies that govern kinship diversion;
• 4: Policies that encourage agencies to engage and partner with kinship caregivers, the children in their care, and parents; and
• 5: Policies that include the perspectives of kinship care families in designing solutions.