Over two million children across the country are being raised by relatives or close family friends. For Indigenous communities, kinship caregiving is a longstanding cultural practice that helps keep children connected to family, culture and homelands.
“What we heard is that the family structure is more fluid,” said Kathy Larin, director of education, workforce and income security at the Government of Accountability Office (GAO). “With kids, you know, will stay with relatives or grandparents and then they'll go back to their parents. It's much less likely to have a situation where the parents will give up their parental rights.”
Researchers from GAO visited tribal nations and counties with higher rates of kinship caregivers in states like New Mexico and found those households are more likely to experience poverty.
The report also found caregiving challenges have worsened since the COVID-19 pandemic, with families dealing with rising living costs and unmet childcare needs.
Larin says that because many Indigenous caregivers are outside the formal foster care system, they often receive less financial support.
“One of the biggest challenges that we heard across the board for grandparents and other relatives that are raising, you know, their relative children is just the financial burden of it.”
Larin says states could adopt standards and programs designed to better support kinship families.
