Achieving Permanency through Subsidized Guardianship

Anne Yates has been caring for her 16-year-old grandson, Ramon, since her daughter began struggling with a heroine addiction three years ago. When she first got the call from Child Protective Services asking her to look after the troubled teen, she didn't hesitate for a minute. Over the years, it's become clear that her daughter isn't getting better. Mrs. Yates is committed to take care of her grandson as long as he needs her. Ramon wants to stay with her, too, but is adamant that he doesn't want to sever his relationship with his mom. It is like kicking her when she's down, he says. Ms. Yates didn't think adoption was the right choice for her either. She is Ramon's grandmother. Why does she have to become his mother in order to take good care of him? While her grandson is doing well in her care, Ms. Yates is tired of all the social worker visits and agency oversight. In her mind, it is time for her and Ramon to get on with their lives. With only a teacher's pension, however, Ms. Yates can't afford to support Ramon without financial help from the agency. There must be another option.

There is another option. Since the passage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) in 1997, state child welfare systems have intensified their efforts to secure permanent, loving families for abused and neglected children who cannot safely return home. At the same time, states are relying more heavily on relatives to provide the nurturing homes that children need. These placements with kin have important benefits for children, including the opportunity to retain their family heritage, sense of belonging, and cultural roots.

For many children who cannot return home to their parents, adoption is not feasible. In many cases like the one described above, subsidized guardianship is an important option that provides children with a permanent home, usually with a caring relative, while giving caregivers the necessary resources and legal authority to keep children safe and secure. Most important, subsidized guardianship often results in a permanent arrangement that can be as emotionally secure as adoption and keep children from becoming adults in foster care.

There is a growing consensus that subsidized guardianship is a viable permanency option. The following article explores why subsidized guardianship has become an increasingly popular permanency option and the circumstances under which its use is appropriate. It summarizes several policy and legal strategies for making it as permanent as possible for families. It also discusses the prospects for subsidized guardianship as a national child welfare priority with federal funding support.

Why has Subsidized Guardianship Become an Increasingly Popular Permanency Option?

According to a recent survey conducted by the Children's Defense Fund, 34 states and the District of Columbia currently have subsidized guardianship programs. For those states seeking permission from the government to use federal foster care dollars more flexibly through Title IV-E waivers, subsidized guardianship is the most frequently requested intervention. In response to the popularity and success of these programs, recent federal legislation has proposed to make subsidized guardianship a federally-funded permanency option for all states.

For many years, children in the child welfare system had only two permanency options available to them: reunification with their families or adoption. In most cases, if adoption or reunification were not possible, children stayed in foster care, often until they became adults. With long term foster care no longer an acceptable permanency outcome for children, subsidized guardianship represents a third and important permanency option, often used in cases where:

• Youth do not want to be adopted because they do not want to terminate their legal relationship with their parents or do not want their relatives to adopt them;
• Relative caregivers do not want to adopt because it unnecessarily and permanently alters family relationships;
• Birth parents are disabled, but because children still have a strong emotional attachment, terminating parental rights would not be in their best interests
• Termination of parental rights runs counter to the cultural traditions of the child's community.

When is Subsidized Guardianship an Appropriate Permanency Option?

When children are in the safe and nurturing environment of a relative (and in some cases a non-related caregiver), and adoption is not appropriate, subsidized guardianship provides several important benefits. First, it provides children with a permanent family and a sense of belonging. Second, it allows caregivers to make important legal decisions about children's health and educational future. Third, it allows children to remain within their family structure, providing them with the sense of family heritage and cultural roots that is important to their long-term development. Finally, the ongoing financial support provided to caregivers, like an adoption subsidy, allows them to meet the on-going needs of the child to ensure continued stability and well-being.

How Permanent is Subsidized Guardianship?

Some critics contend that subsidized guardianship is not as permanent as adoption, and therefore not as desirable a permanency option for children. It is true that because parental rights are not terminated, birth parents retain some residual legal rights and responsibilities, such as the right to visitation with the child and the responsibility to pay child support. Birth parents can also petition the court to re-gain custody of the child. Arguably, caregivers can more easily dissolve a guardianship arrangement, especially as the child experiences the challenge of adolescence.

From a legal standpoint, subsidized guardianship is not as permanent as adoption. Yet when adoption is not an appropriate option for the family, preliminary research has shown that subsidized guardianship can provide equally as secure an arrangement as adoption, and is certainly preferable to long term foster care.

Research from two of the largest state subsidized guardianship programs helps make the case that subsidized guardianship can result in long-term security and permanency for children. The Illinois Subsidized Guardianship Waiver Demonstration Program found that of the 6,820 children that entered into guardianship arrangements between April 1997 and February 2002, only 237, or 3.4% of the children are no longer living in the home of the original guardian. Of those children that are no longer living with guardians in Illinois, only 39 children returned to live with the birth parents. Overall, Illinois found that children in the experimental group who had a combination of reunification, subsidized guardianship and adoption as options had a net permanency gain of 6.6% over children in the control group, who did not have subsidized guardianship as an option.

Research from California's Kin-GAP program also suggests a high level of security and permanency among kinship guardianship families. Of the 8,231 children who exited foster care into Kin-GAP between January 1, 2000 and February 2002, only 55 children (0.8%) re-entered foster care and only 173 experienced subsequent maltreatment. Further analysis of re-entries revealed that only 30 percent of children returned to care due to maltreatment. The rest largely returned to care as a result of child behavioral problems, the death or illness of the caregiver, the initiation of formal reunification procedures, or other specialized service needs.

What Can States Do to Make Subsidized Guardianship More Secure?

States are also finding that there are significant steps that can be taken to strengthen existing guardianship laws, policies and practices to make subsidized guardianship arrangements even more permanent. These include:

• Amending laws to tighten standards for birth parents seeking to modify guardianship arrangements
• Requiring that the guardian and the courts inform child welfare agency of any proposed modifications to the guardianship arrangement
• Obtaining birth parent consent to the guardianship arrangement to minimize the likelihood of future legal challenges
• Providing detailed guardianship agreements that clearly articulate rights and responsibilities of guardians, birth parents and the agency
• Requiring that standby guardians be designated in the event that guardians become incapacitated or die
• Requiring that the child live with the prospective guardian for a period of time before becoming eligible for subsidized guardianship in order to assess the caregiver's underlying commitment to the child and attachment of the child to the caregiver

As with adoptions, thorough preparation of all parties in advance of finalization of guardianship agreements has also been shown to help ensure that caregivers are prepared to make a permanent commitment to the child. Providing support to the child and the caregiver after the guardianship is finalized can also help ensure a child's safety and permanence, a finding consistent with how to ensure stability in adoptive placements.

What Do States Need to Consider When Planning or Expanding Subsidized Guardianship Programs?

Subsidized guardianship is an important addition to a state or local agency's overall permanency framework for children. In order to ensure safety and security for children and increase subsidized guardianship's value in the child welfare community, states should consider the following steps:

• Provide a subsidy level that is equal to what the child received in foster care or that mirrors the adoption assistance subsidy -- subsidy levels must be adequate to allow the caregiver to support the child's basic needs, as well as to address any special needs that are not covered by other assistance programs. Providing a subsidy level that is equal to the adoption subsidy also recognizes that guardianship is equally valued as a permanency option;
• Ensure the guardianship subsidy does not negatively impact eligibility for other programs -- children should have access to other critical services and supports to meet the full range of needs, particularly independent living services and supports, tuition assistance programs, and health care.
• Develop child and caregiver eligibility requirements that are flexible and inclusive -- while some states have set minimum age requirements for children and limit eligibility to relatives only, others have found that broad eligibility requirements allow them to respond better to the unique needs of every family.
• Provide on-going training for workers, private agencies, judges, attorneys, families and young people -- thorough preparation of all parties as to what subsidized guardianship is, how it compares to other permanency options, the circumstances under which it is appropriate, and other information families need to know to make the right choice for children is critical. Training should be more than an exercise in how to fill out the correct forms and process a guardianship agreement.
• Consider how subsidized guardianship can be used to prevent children from entering foster care -- many children who cannot live with their birth parents are in the safe and nurturing home of a relative without ever having to enter the foster care system. These kinship caregivers repeatedly report how difficult it is to meet the needs of the children in their care without the requisite financial support and other services. Increasingly, state and local agencies are exploring ways to support these long-term kinship care providers outside the child welfare system. Subsidized guardianship may be one of many options to ensure continued safety and stability for these children.
• Consider how the courts can best support guardianship as a permanency option -- the courts have a significant role to play in making decisions about permanency options for children in the child welfare system. Judges, attorneys and court personnel must be integrally involved in efforts to enhance subsidized guardianship as a permanency option. This includes decisions about which court jurisdiction is most appropriate and how cases will be transferred between courts, if appropriate.
• Determine how best to support guardian families after permanency has been achieved -- like many adoptive families, some guardianship families will need on-going support after the guardianship has been finalized, particularly as children go through adolescence and other developmental milestones. Determining how families can access services and supports, including support groups, mental health services, respite care, help with visitation, and other issues will help keep guardian families together.

How Can We Make Subsidized Guardianship a National Priority?

Subsidized guardianship is one of several effective strategies for securing the long-term stability of abused and neglected children. Currently, state and local subsidized guardianship programs use state dollars, local funding, TANF block grant funding or federal Title IV-E waivers to support this permanency option. Yet increasingly, there is a call to provide all states with the option of using Title IV-E to fund guardianship subsidies. In order for this to happen, the following steps are needed:

1) Advocacy -- advocates for children can play a significant role in making the case for subsidized guardianship as a viable permanency option. Kinship caregivers must publicly share their stories about what it means to make a long-term commitment to abused and neglected children and what services are needed to ensure their long-term safety and security.

2) Evaluation -- initial evaluations show promising results for children in subsidized guardianship programs. These evaluation results should be disseminated to a broader audience, including policy makers and the media. Additional evaluations from states with Title IV-E waivers, as well as those states with long-standing guardianship program, are also essential

3) Fiscal considerations -- state and local agencies have a strong hunch that guardianship saves significant costs associated with keeping children in foster care, including the cost of case management, case planning and reviews, court hearings, and administrative costs. While the Illinois evaluation demonstrated that cost savings can be achieved, more data will help states make the case for federal support for subsidized guardianship as a cost-effective option.

4) Support for all kinship care providers -- to date, most subsidized guardianship programs have been developed primarily for children exiting foster care. Yet the vast majority of children living with relatives are being raised outside the formal foster care system. Efforts to expand subsidized guardianship for children exiting foster care must be coupled with strategies to support children living in other types of kinship care arrangements, regardless of their relationship to the child welfare agency.