As the death toll from the pandemic continues to rise, it is not just these individuals whose futures are lost. About 140,000 children in the U.S. have had at least one parent die from Covid; most of them are children of color. More than one-fifth of these will need a relative caregiver – maybe a grandparent, aunt or uncle, or older sibling.
Experts say these arrangements are often kept informal. But without becoming a legal guardian, adopting the child or signing up to be an official foster parent, caregivers are ineligible to claim benefits earmarked specifically for these children, and they are not offered the same training as licensed foster parents.
The situation was explored in an article in USA Today in which University of Washington School of Social Work Associate Professor Angelique Day was interviewed. “Licensing relatives comes with a much more robust base of resources to support those families,” said Day in the article. In Washington state, she points out, only a small percentage of kinship caregivers have become licensed.
Day, who joined the School faculty in 2017, is an expert in the field of foster care youth and child well-being, and has several research projects underway. One is to study the effect that foster, adoptive and kinship parent training intervention has on the stability and permanency of a teenage placement. Another is to determine whether targeted college access and retention programs can help students with foster care histories successfully complete post-secondary education.
In fall 2021, the Administration for Children & Families’ Children’s Bureau awarded Day and a multi-institutional team a federal grant to develop a national center to engage and empower foster youth ages 12 to 20. The goal is to give youth a more active role when decisions are made about their care. As part of the Quality Improvement Center on Engaging Youth in Finding Permanency, the team is evaluating and implementing youth-engagement models at six to eight pilot sites before national implementation. Day serves as the lead evaluator on project.