What's Good About Kinship Placements?

When children are removed from their parents' home, their world is turned upside down and they suffer physiologically and emotionally. Psychiatrist James Bowlby, who has studied the effects of separation andloss on children for more than three decades, says that such children move through three stages of mourning -- protest, despair, and detachment. They may lash out in words or behavior, then become despondent and hopeless, and finally, detach themselves emotionally to survive this significant loss. Their healthy development and ability to adjust to losses throughout life may be compromised.

When relatives are available to fill the gap, the blow is softened. Children will still feel uprooted and sad, of course, but familiar faces and surroundings and people they know and trust will comfort them. Equally important, family arrangements usually give children more stability; they are less likely to experience the numerous moves that children in foster care with nonrelatives frequently experience. A study by the Child Welfare League of America revealed that only 23 percent of children placed with relatives were not able to continue living with them after 3 years, compared with 58 percent of children in nonrelative foster care.

Children living with family may have a better chance to stay in touch with their parents. It is easier for the parents to call or visit more often, and perhaps participate to some extent in raising their children. Parents may still be included in family events and there may be pictures of them in the house-all of which keeps children from feeling totally cut off from their past. Relatives' attitudes about children in their family are likely to be more positive than those of nonrelatives, though this is not always the case. Relatives know more about the children's history and may be less fearful of unknown factors in their background.

A study by social worker Timothy J. Gebel supports the idea that relatives generally have a more positive perception of children in their care than do nonrelative foster parents-and are more likely to like and accept them. In Gebel's research, relatives tended to describe the children in their care as "very good natured" while nonrelatives were more likely to call them "difficult to handle." The two attitudes, of course, have different impacts on a child's development.

It is not only the children who benefit from staying in their family. Blood ties run deep, and brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, and uncles often feel more comfortable knowing that the children in their family are being nurtured and lovingly cared for by people they know. Many grandparents say they couldn't tolerate being shut out of their grandchildren's lives or having a stranger take care of them. The anxiety about their well-being and safety would be unbearable.

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Credits: Child Welfare Information Gateway (http://www.childwelfare.gov)