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.

This article from Child Law Practice Today (ABA Center on Children and the Law) explores the importance of fictive kin and why states should either include fictive kin in the definition of “relative” for purposes of ASFA, GAP, kinship foster care, and child placement, or define “fictive kin” in their statutes and then apply all policies regarding relatives to relatives and fictive kin equally. 

The Children’s Bureau letter released June 2019 to child welfare leaders providing an update on the new Title IV-E Prevention Program, created under the Family First Prevention Services Act, specifically as it relates to how states can claim transitional payments for prevention services not yet reviewed and rated in the Clearinghouse if the state submits sufficient documentation that demonstrates how the service meets the evidence-based criteria outlined in Family First. The Children’s Bureau will be issuing further guidance on these transitional payments. 

This second in a series of Family First briefs focuses on Leveraging the Family First Prevention Services Act to Improve Use of Title IV-E GAP in states and tribes.  This brief contains an analysis on the impact of this new law on GAP  and provides action steps to promote its use for children in relative care.