Permanency in kinship care: an exploration of disruption rates and factors associated with placement...

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Children andYoutb Services Review, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 111-126, 2001 Copyright 0 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved

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Permanency in Kinship Care: An Exploration of Disruption Rates and Factors Associated

with Placement Disruption

Toni Terling-Watt University of Oklahoma

Relative households are regularly used as temporary foster families for abused and neglected children. However, for those children who are unable to return to their families of origin, relatives are often called on to provide permanent homes for these children. Little information is available regarding the outcomes of such relative placements. This research utilizes multiple methods and data sources on relative placements in Houston, Texas to explore disruption rates for potentially permanent kinship placements and barriers to achieving permanency with relatives. Results reveal substantial disruption rates (approximately 50%) for children placed in kinship care that do not go home to their original families. Exploratory qualitative analyses revealed that the majority of relatives reportedly wanted to keep the children permanently and did not pose a threat of continued maltreatment to them. However, several familial stressors were present which undermined the stability of these placements. Barriers to permanency include; contact with biological parents, adolescents’ rejection of structured environments, special needs children, and health limitations of relatives. These findings support the view that kinship care households are valuable resources. However, they also provide new details regarding thz possible unmet needs of relative caregivers that may need to be addressed to enable relatives to represent promising options for permanency.

Kinship care placements have been growing and represent a sizable percentage of the placements for abused and neglected children (20-50%) (Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, 1990; Ingram, 1996; Kusserow, 1992; Meyer & Link, 1990). Kinship placements are even described as having catapulted from “last resort to first choice” among the options utilized by practitioners for out-of -home care (Ingram, 1996, p. 1). In many instances these relative placements are meant to serve as an alternative to non-family foster care, keeping the children temporarily while the parents complete their plan of service, at which time the

Requests for reprints should be sent to Toni Terling-Watt, Department of Sociology, 3 11 Kaufinan Hall, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019. [[email protected]]

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children are returned to their families of origin. However, relatives also represent potentially permanent placements for children whose parents are unable to regain custody. In this regard they are a unique and valuable resource since permanent placements, particularly for older children, are scarce. In addition, recent policies making termination of parental rights easier for substance abusing or incarcerated parents ensure that relatives providing out-of-home care will increasingly be called on to keep the children long-term (Terling, 1999). However, information on the permanency of relative placements is a documented but unmet need (Berrick, Barth, & Needell, 1994; Dubowitz, 1994). We don’t know whether relatives are willing and/or able to provide suitable and permanent homes for these children. Some argue that kinship households are an important mechanism for preserving biological ties while others assert that many of these relatives are not competent caregivers (Sparr, 1993; Dubowitz, 1994). How- ever, these debates have been described as “conjectural and circular” due to the lack of research on kinship households (George, Wulczyn, & Fan- shel, 1994, p.532). This study utilizes quantitative and qualitative methods and multiple data sources to examine the viability of relatives as permanent placement options. A quantitative longitudinal dataset of children placed with relatives in Houston, Texas is used to identify the disruption rate for potentially permanent relative placements (for children who do not return to their original families). Detailed case files and in-depth interviews with practitioners inside and outside of Child Protective Services are used to explore barriers to achieving permanency with relative caregivers.

Relevant Literature

As discussed, while the readiness to use kinship homes has been growing, kinship care is controversial (Goerge et al., 1994). The phrase, “blood is thicker than water”, has been used by proponents of kinship care (Dubowitz, Feigelman, & Zuravin, 1993, p. 154). More specifically, those supporting kinship care assert that relatives have a special commitment to these children because there is already an established bond between caregiver and child, more genuine and long lasting than is likely to be present or attained with a foster family. Consistent with this assertion, Gebel (1996) found relative caregivers to have more positive perceptions about the children than foster families. In addition, it is likely reassuring to the child that they will be going to a familiar environment and spares them the

Permanency in Kinship Care 113

tram of placement with strangers. The separation of siblings is also less likely with kinship placements, which likely is comforting to the children (Berrick et al., 1994). Contact with the biological parent is also common with kinship care, which, it has been argued, is “desirable for most mal- treated children,” (Berrick et al. 1994; Dubowitz et al. 1993, p.154). While many of these factors are used to support relatives as foster families, they also suggest that relatives can serve as permanent caregivers for these children

Arguments against kinship care center on the quality of kinship homes since these caregivers are the very families that helped to create troubled parents. Kinship homes have been found to have many of the same characteristics of the original abusive/neglectful families. Relative caregivers are more likely to be female heads of households, low income, unemployed, have limited education, and already have an average of three children to take care of before the placement (Dubowitz, et al., 1993; Berrick et al., 1994). Finally, while continued contact with the biological parent is reportedly a benefit of kinship care, scholars do note that this could be a detriment as well. Continued contact could be synonymous with continued abuse or at the least, lead to conflict between relatives and biological parents regarding boundaries (Dubowitz et al., 1993). In some instances, children placed with relatives may not even move from the home they lived in before entering the custody of the state. In these instances the resumption of parenting and possibly abusive behavior by the original parent seems likely. Thus, many kinship households may not represent viable long-term placement options for children.

Research on outcomes of kinship care placements is extremely limited. Most of the research that has been conducted has focused on compar- ing kinship foster homes to non-family foster homes in their ability to provide temporary care. In this line of investigation studies have offered some positive reports on kinship care. Research reveals that children in family foster care are satisfied with their living arrangements and rate their caregivers highly (Wilson & Conroy, 1999), and child welfare professionals offer positive perceptions of kinship foster care and kinship foster parents (Beeman & Boisen 1999). Iglehart (1994) even found that adolescents in kinship care were functioning better than those in non-family foster care. Regarding long-term outcomes, research also reveals that the children go home more slowly and once home, they are less likely to reenter the child welfare system than those coming from non-family foster care (Barth, Courtney, Ben-i&, & Albert, 1994). While these are encouraging reports, Dubowitz et al. (1993) found higher abuse/neglect rates for kinship care

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households than for foster care families, suggesting that concern over the suitability of relative caregivers is not unfounded.

These few studies have offered important insight into whether relatives can successfully serve as temporary placements. However, consid- erably less information exists about relatives’ ability to keep children long-term when they are unable to return to their biological families. Link (1996) looked at relative placements in Erie County, New York and en- couragingly reported that a high percentage of relatives adopted or planned to adopt the children placed with them. However, her findings also revealed that a sizable percentage of children placed with relatives did not remain with them or return to their biological parents, but returned to the child welfare system. She also offered no information about whether those families planning to adopt actually became permanent placements. Minkler and Roes’ (1993) fmding that kin caregivers rate their health as poor when compared to regular foster parents, points to an important dis- tinction between what relatives plan to do and what they are able to do in terms of providing permanent homes for these children. With outcome research in its infancy, additional studies of the permanency of relative placements are needed. More importantly, there is no information on what factors contribute to the success or failure of these placements, which Dubowitz argues is “the important policy-relevant question” (1994, ~562). Given that children who don’t return home often have no other options for a permanent placement, it is important to understand whether their relative placements remain intact and if not, to identify reasons for disruption. Some reasons may be beyond the scope of interventionists (e.g. the relatives never wanted permanent custody or they were abusive caregivers). However, others may simply help interventionists to identify the familial stressors that hinder permanency and to develop strategies to address difficulties encountered by relatives attempting to incorporate these children into their established families.

Data and Methods

This research examines the permanency outcomes for kinship placements using three data sources. One source of information for this research is a large database of all family reunification cases served by CPS in Houston, Texas between January 1993 and July 1996 (n=25 15). Family reunification cases are cases where the child is removed for abuse and/or neglect and placed in substitute care (either relative or non-family foster


care). However, the directive on the case is to reunite the child with his/her family of origin or to permanently place the child with a relative. Of these 2515 family reunification cases, 1650 children (who stayed in either relative or non-family foster care temporarily) were returned to their families of origin. The remaining 875 were placed with relatives and did not return to their families of origin. These 875 cases represent the potentially permanent relative placements stemming from CPS involvement and are the subsample of cases used in the present study. While an important issue is whether relatives offer suitable temporary foster care placements, more so than traditional foster families, that is not the focus of this investigation. This study focuses on the viability of relatives as permanent placements. These 875 cases are analyzed to determine the disruption rate for children placed with relatives (who do not go return to their families of origin). Disruption (coded as 1) is defined as whether an additional incident of abuse/neglect occurred after the child had been placed in the relatives’ home, reentry into foster care or another institution due to a failure of the placement, and/or if the child ran away and could not be located. Disruption is coded 0 if the child remained with the relative without incident for the duration of the observation period.

This large computer database provides complete longitudinal data on the children’s entry, exit and reentry into the system. Unfortunately it is extremely limited in descriptive information on the children and/or the relatives taking custody of them. For example, age and sex of the child are not included, and missing data on measures present, such as type of abuse, is extensive (e.g. 69%). Thus, a second smaller sample of relative placements was derived from the larger dataset to enable a more in-depth analysis of case characteristics. From the 875 relative placements a stratified random sample of thirty cases was drawn (19 disrupted and 11 non- disrupted kinship placements). CPS provided the hard copy case files for these thirty cases for extensive review. These case files offered very detailed narrative information on the relative caregivers and children from a variety of sources (caseworkers, family members, police reports, thera- pists, ad litems, neighbors, etc.). Using this information I was able to explore factors associated with the breakdown of relative placements. These case files provide important insight into issues such as; were these relatives only expecting to keep these children temporarily or did they plan to be permanent placements; if they intended to be permanent, why did the placement break down?

Finally, in-depth interviews were conducted with 26 interventionists to obtain their perspectives on relative placements and factors contributing

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to disruption. Sixteen CPS caseworkers and supervisors were interviewed. In addition, 10 practitioners from a community-based organization (CASA) were interviewed as well. Community based organizations such as Child Advocates are playing an increasingly important role in decision- making on and services provided to child abuse and neglect cases. Given that community based interventionists operate outside of the state system and work with caseworkers on a daily basis, they can serve as valuable informants regarding the efficacy of CPS practices.

The analysis of these three data sources is presented in two sections. First, the database of 875 relative placements is used to calculate disruption rates for children placed with relatives who do not return to their families of origin. This is a preliminary investigation simply to determine whether disruption is common for relative placements. Secondly, the hard copy case files and in-depth interviews with interventionists are used in an exploratory qualitative analysis to identify factors that may be contributing to the breakdown of relative placements.

Results

Placement Disruption Rates

Using the analytical approaches outlined earlier, disruption rates are estimated for this sample of placements. This sample of relative placements is not an inception cohort. Follow-up periods ranged from a month after placement up to three and a half years following placement. The following table provides the percent of children placed with relatives who experienced a disruption in the placement, by time since the child’s placement with the relative (s).

Table 1 Percent of Kinship Placements Disrupting by

Time Since Child’s Placement in tbe Home

% Disrupting

0

Time in Months Since Child’s Placement O-6 7-12 13-18 19-24 25-30 31-36 Total

29.2 32.2 20.5 36.8 49.4 48.2 33.1 (209) (183) (117) (106) (79) (141) (875)


These data reveal that disruption is quite high for these particular relative placements. Table I reveals that the risk is greatest in the first six months (29%). Between the second and third year disruption rises to almost half of the children placed with these relatives (48/49%). This high rate calls for further analysis of kinship placements as permanent homes. It is important to restate that this sample represents a portion of relative placements, as it does not include relatives that cared for the children temporarily. This analysis is only a preliminary investigation of whether potentially permanent relative placements, where children do not go home, have measurable disruption rates. More sophisticated replication is required before making conclusions about the specific rate of disruption. However, the present study suggests that disruption rates, at the least, may be considerable.

Factors Contributing to Disruption

While the analysis of the quantitative CPS database suggests that many relatives are not able to permanently care for the children placed with them, it does not explain why these disruptions occur. However, hard copy case files and in-depth interviews presented a fairly clear picture of how a few key problem areas may hinder relatives from providing permanent homes for children who do not return to their biological families.

While concern has been voiced over CPS hastily choosing relatives for placement and pushing or even misleading relatives into taking care of these children long term, the relative placement cases examined did not support this assertion. Cases reveal that often several relatives are investi- gated and several eliminated before an appropriate caregiver is found. The vast majority of cases reviewed, disrupted and non-disrupted, involved relatives who reportedly loved and wanted custody of the children and who could offer the children a safe and supportive environment. In many cases the children also seemed quite pleased with the placement. The following comments from the case files offer elaboration of the positive nature of many of these placements initially.

The grandparents love the children like their own.

The kids love their relatives as parents.

They want the children long term.

They have a very strong bond and she (the grandmother) has provided a safe home for them.

They are well bonded and care greatly for the boys.

In the interviews caseworkers concurred that most relatives that take these children do so with very good intentions and with much commitment to them.

According to the case files and the caseworkers, additional abuse or neglect of the child by the relative was not a common occurrence, cer- tainly unable to account for a disruption rate of almost 50%. The argument that these families are as dysfunctional and deficient as the family of origin was not borne out from this research. Only two of the 19 disrupted placements involved allegations of maltreatment or an inappropriate caregiver. The worst case was of a grandmother who reportedly used fairly harsh corporal punishment with the children, and in general was quite violent. It was thought, not that she would intentionally hurt the children, but that her violent tendencies created an unsafe and inappropriate environment. This grandmother had previously shot and paralyzed the stepfather who had sexually abused her granddaughter and physically abused her daughter (the mother). The teenage granddaughter became pregnant while in her care and the grandmother tried to shoot the boyfriend responsible. Finally, when her custody of the children came into question, the grandmother threatened to beat the caseworker with her cane if she tried to take the children. It is interesting that even the least appropriate relative placement found in the analysis involved a family member who loved the children, wanted to keep them, and was expending considerable effort to raise and protect them the best she knew how (albeit the inappropriateness of her actions is unquestionable). In sum, while disruption occurred fie- quently, uncommitted and abusive relatives were seemingly not the expla- nation.

Contact with the Biological Parents

The most common problem contributing to placement disruption in the sample was the continued influence of the parent(s). Seven of the nineteen cases involved relatives who were either unable or unwilling to main- tain the boundaries between the child and the parent established by CPS. Caseworkers also raised this as a critical issue for placement success.


When asked about the stability of relative placements, one caseworker stated, “It depends on if the mom is still around. The issue is, who is going to parent this child”. Often the relatives do not sanction the contact. Sev- eral relatives even felt that they or the child were in danger because of the parents’ continued presence in their lives. In a few cases the relative reported that the parent was trying to steal the child from them. Several relatives returned the children to custody because they felt that CPS would be better able to protect the child from the parent than they would. Other relatives were often afraid of the parents themselves given the hostility the parents expressed towards them. In one case the mother assaulted the grandmother, who was in poor health already, over the custody arrange- ment. The second problem associated with the biological parents is not of the relatives’ lack of control over them, but rather their difficulty in understanding or believing the limitations of the parent and the dangers they represent to the child. In most of these cases, unsupervised visits between parent and child are prohibited. However, many relatives violate the agreements and allow it. Their actions, when discovered, usually result in the removal of the child (at least temporarily). One case involved grandparents that allowed their daughter to spend time alone with her infant. The mother was addicted to crack and left the baby to go to a crack house. The caseworker’s report ofthe discussions with the grandparent about the incident stated, “She (the mother) has remained drug free for the whole three months and she has participated in the care of the baby and they (the grandparents) felt comfortable”. In another case where the mother was a schizophrenic and had been physically abusive towards her child, the grandparents also violated the CPS agreement and allowed the mother to have unsupervised visitation. The case report stated, “They are older individuals.... They have a hard time understanding the seriousness of the allegations and CPS policy concerning the safety plans that they signed. They don’t understand the depth of their daughter’s mental instabilities”. In these cases relatives seemed to have limited understanding of the risk the parents posed and were tom between their love for the parents and their love for the child. The examination of non-disrupted cases also offers support for the contention that continued contact with the parent is usually problematic. Many of the intact relative placements had biological parents who were no longer in the area, either in jail or out of state, and parents who did not want custody or even contact with the child. Thus the findings of this research are inconsistent with blanket assertions that continued contact with the biological parent is a positive aspect of relative place-

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ments. In some cases, it may be the biggest threat to achieving permanency.

Adolescents in structured environments

Another common problem involved the difficulty adolescents coming from long-term substance abusing families have in adapting to relative placements. Of the nineteen reentry cases examined, six fit this profile. Part of the adjustment problem appears to be taking the youth from an extremely unstructured environment to a very structured one. Many of these teens were reportedly used to being on their own, taking care of themselves, and making critical life decisions without any guidance. They have essentially been the adult in the household and do not adapt well to being treated as children. These teens have been described as being “very inde- pendent”, having “trouble following the rules”, and “challenging author- ity”. One case involved a fourteen year old girl who, according to the case file was, “allowed to do whatever she wanted to do for ten years while her mother was on drugs. She went to school when she wanted, took care of herself, and was responsible for the other children in the household”. Af- ter the relative placement, she reportedly “wants to go back and run the streets as she did before when she lived with her mother”. This fourteen- year old girl came to her relatives already sexually active; she had previously contracted a sexually transmitted disease. However, the new rules in the relative household were that she was too young to date. The teen ran away over this issue. Another case involved a teen (16 years old) with very similar problems. The case tile stated that, “She feels she is not being treated fairly in the home and is required to do all the housework. She also feels she doesn’t have any privileges and can not go anywhere. The household is too strict”. This teenager also ran away when her relatives would not allow her to get on birth control. While it is unclear what is an appropriate strategy for raising a teenager who has been forced to grow up more quickly than most, the imposition of a strict and highly structured environment appears to be associated with much conflict which often results in disruption of the placement. While relatives may be able to de- mand that a younger child adjust to the rules, caseworkers noted that teenagers will simply not stay in ‘this environment. One caseworker stated, “teenagers run away all the time. They will run from our office”.

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work intensively to change his associated deficiencies. In sum, children, particularly teenagers, who have experienced abuse and neglect for a substantial period of time have many special needs which relatives do not ap- pear equipped to handle. At the extreme, these children may need extensive outside help. At the least, more needs to be understood and communi- cated to relatives about effective strategies for incorporating children raised in a neglectful and/or abusive environment.

Age and Health Limitations of Relatives

Another common problem associated with relative placements was the age and health of the relatives. Four of the nineteen placements that disrupted were cases where the relatives simply could not handle the strain of caregiving at their age or in their physical condition. One case was of a 69-year-old woman who was beginning to experience symptoms of senil- ity and thus could not meet the needs of a small child (3-year-old). In another case where the grandparents had taken two boys, ages five and three, they relinquished custody to the state when the grandmother became ter- minally ill. The grandfather was caring for the grandmother and could not adequately take care. of the boys as well. The case file reported, “He was very remorseful, he did not want to release the boys but felt as if he had no choice”. Given that. the agedness of many relative caregivers results in placement disruption. even in the first few years, it will be important to also explore the long-term ramifications of grandparent placements. When these placements involve infants or young children, age limitations, while they may not surface immediately, will likely become an issue before the child reaches maturity.

Service Needs

Many of these cases reveal a need for the provision of more information, training and support for relatives taking these children. Caseworkers noted that relatives are often financially strained and lacking in knowledge about the task in front of them. Caseworkers also stated that services are rarely provided to relatives but that they are needed. Some caseworkers do spend time with relatives to aid the adjustment but it is not necessarily the norm. However, caseworkers also felt that many relatives were resistant to services. One caseworker elaborated, “In some cases they weren’t equipped enough, some relatives may think of this as a perfect child, it is like, lack of knowledge. You try to inform them as much as possible but


Special needs children

The difficulty in maintaining these placements is also related to the psychological and behavioral problems of the children and teenagers re- sulting from the years of abuse and neglect and of the trauma of separation from their parents. Caseworkers stated that many of these relatives are simply not equipped to deal with such troubling issues. For example, in one case the relatives were quite frustrated with the sexual acting out of the child who had been sexually abused for years by her father. They didn’t understand how to interpret it or handle it. A case of a 13 year old boy illustrates how a very tragic childhood often produces teenagers with psychological and behavioral problems far beyond what most parents with teenagers have to endure. This boy’s mother died when he was six. His abusive alcoholic father raised him. At age thirteen the boy came home to find his father dead. Custody was taken by the state and he was subse- quently placed with relatives. The psychological assessment described the boy as having “attachment disorder and absolute rage”. Despite the abusive and neglectful relationship he had with his father, he was still strug- gling with depression over his death. He stated that he loved him very much and that after his father’s death, “his life went straight to hell”. He expectedly had a difficult time adjusting to his new environment. The relatives that took him reportedly wanted the placement to work. However, the boy was just too troubled. They stated that he “is violent, threatening to hurt or kill their nine year old daughter”. They had to hide knives and other potential weapons from him. At fifteen he ran away from the relative placement.

Caseworkers confirmed that part of the problem with relative placements is that the relatives are uninformed and unrealistic about their ability to address the problems of the children they take. They feel empowered by the good deed they are doing and believe that with time and love they can offer the child exactly what he or she had been denied. Unfortunately for many of these children, time and love are not sufficient. As was men- tioned, many teenagers’ needs were quite extensive and complicated. Caseworkers also noted that some of these children have physical needs as well that relatives weren’t prepared for. One caseworker offered the example of a child with cerebal.palsy that was placed with relatives. The caregiver in this case was trying to force the child to walk on his own without a walker or wheel chair and was punishing him when he couldn’t do it. This relative’s perspective seemingly was that all the child’s problems were due to the negligent parenting he had endured and that they could


they don’t actually see it until they actually have that child in their placement. That is when the placement breaks down”. Another caseworker stated “Some relatives say, ‘I know how that kid is’, and we say, ‘well this is how this kid is now’. They think the kid is going to revert back to the child they knew and that isn’t going to happen. They (the relatives) have the perception that ‘I have raised my kids, why do I have any need for services? I can handle this kid.’ Well, you can’t handle this kid because you don’t know what this child has been through when he lived with his parents.”

According to this research caseworkers noted that these families do need help with these placements but that they don’t provide services or offer training programs and that even when help is offered, relative resistance is an additional barrier. However, Berrick et al. (1994) found kinship providers to be eager to receive services to help them raise these children. More research is needed on the intervention process with relatives to clarify whether caregivers are resistant to services and so, how to ap- proach such resistance.

Discussion

The family preservation movement is predicated on the importance of blood ties, which includes an emphasis not only on returning children to their original homes but also on their placement with relatives. However, the increasing reliance on kinship care by CPS has been a controversial practice. Proponents have argued that blood ties are stronger and longer lasting than relationships established though foster care or non-relative adoption. Thus, children are likely happier with and ultimately fare better in relative placements. Opponents have questioned the suitability of these homes since relative caregivers are likely to have parental and household deficiencies similar to the parents.

The results of this study reveal a more complicated picture of kinship care than can be encapsulated by either of these two positions. First, results reveal high disruption rates (approximately 50%) for this sample of potentially permanent relative placements. This does not indicate that relative placements are always problematic, but that often relatives are not able to serve as permanent homes for children who do not return to their biological parents. The reasons for placement disruption, however, do not portray relatives as abusive and neglectful caregivers cut from the same cloth, so to speak, as the parents. From this qualitative investigation, kin-

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ship caregivers appeared to be individuals’ whose effort to stop the abuse and neglect of these children was commendable. They were often individuals with children of their own, financial strains, and/or health and ag- ing limitations. Despite these strains they were willing to take these children and raise them as their own. Their critical flaws were largely their lack of understanding of and preparedness for, the tremendous nature of this task. This study found placement disruptions to be predominately at- tributable to the difficulty teenagers have in adjusting to a new and highly structured environment, the strains of raising children with, in many cases, severe psychological, physical and/or behavioral problems stemming from years of abuse, the policing required of the original parents to keep them away from the children, and the age and health limitations that often emerge for the relatives.

Dubowitz (1994) documented an extensive and complicated list of in- formational needs in the area of kinship care. This study has tapped into only a few of these unanswered questions. This study focuses on the potential of relatives to serve as permanent placements and provides a within group exploratory analysis of barriers to achieving permanency. In taking this focus it does not offer information on how children fare in relative versus non-relative fostercare placements when placed there temporarily. It does not examine other permanent placement options. It also does not address the outcomes of informal kinship placements. Finally it is limited in its generalizability by geographic and temporal dimensions of the data as well as the small sample size. However, it does provide insight into a specific subgroup of relative placements for which we have very little information. Relatives often represent the only realistic options for providing a permanent home for children whose biological parents are unsuit- able. Thus a better understanding of why these placements disrupt is an important step towards achieving permanency. The present analysis offers a unique exploration of these issues that can inform future investigations. This research has revealed kinship care placements to be a valuable resource, not to be quickly dismissed due to a guilt by association argument. However, they are more of an uncultivated resource at this point. Findings offer new details regarding the challenges relatives face that may hinder their efforts to provide these children with permanent homes. It also reit- erates that relatives do not receive the needed assistance in meeting these challenges.

Despite its prevalence, the pubic system has not focused on the needs of kinship caregivers (Cohon & Cooper, 1999). Kinship placements receive less monitoring and fewer services than non-relative foster place-


ments (Gebel, 1996; Berrick et al. 1994; Dubowitz, Feigehnan, Harring- ton, Starr, Zuravin, & Sawyer, 1994). Kinship care discussions are beginning to encapsulate the financial needs of relative caregivers (Cohon & Cooper, 1999; Gleeson & Craig, 1994). However, this research suggests that there are numerous other barriers to permanency that may also need to be addressed through supports and services. While some argue that public agencies should not be intrusive with relative caregivers, this research is in support of the counter argument that kinship families need to receive the same services as non-relative foster families. (Dubowitz, 1994; CWLA 1993; Gleeson & Craig 1994). It also suggests that kinship caregivers face unique barriers (e.g. policing the parents) that require additional consid- eration when designing services for them. More research is needed on the barriers to permanency and on effective strategies for facilitating adjustment in these homes. High disruption rates unfortunately add to the already extensive suffering experienced by these children and their families. Detailed information of the nature of disruption will help public and pri- vate interventionists equip relatives with the resources they need to in- crease the odds of providing children with a much needed permanent home.

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Permanency in kinship care: an exploration of disruption rates and factors associated with placement...

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