WP-00-19

Dorothy Roberts

Abstract

This paper focuses on kinship foster care as an example of relinquishing legal custody of children to gain access to public services they need. Kinship foster care replaces a traditional, private African American family arrangement with a similar structure that is regulated by state child welfare agencies. Part II describes this transformation of kinship care from a predominantly private family network to a widely used source of public foster care. Part III discusses the structure of state payments for kinship care giving and its correlation to the level of state supervision of care givers. In Part IV, I explore how kinship foster care often involves relinquishing custody of children in exchange for services and benefits that families need. I discuss the increasing number of "voluntary" placements of children in foster care, the impact of state supervision on families involved in kinship foster care, and the inferior services received by these families. In Part V, I show that incorporating kinship care in the child welfare system often harms families by disrupting ties among kin rather than preserving them. Finally, Part VI contends that the extreme government supervision of these families through the child welfare system stems from the failure of more general state support for care giving. The onerous price exacted from poor Black families for public assistance demonstrates the need for fundamental change in our philosophy of care.

Dorothy Roberts, School of Law, Northwestern University

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