Who goes into kinship care?
The relationship of child and family
characteristics to placement into
kinship foster care
Andrew Grogan-Kaylor
This study used administrative child welfare data from
California to examine the relationship of the
characteristics of children and their families to whether
children were placed in kinship foster care or in some
other form of child welfare placement. It was found
that many characteristics of children and their
families—such as children’s age and race, children’s
health status, type of family from which children were
removed, AFDC eligibility of the family from which
children were removed, and the reason for which the
children were removed from their caregivers—are
related to the type of foster care setting in which
children were placed.
Key words: administrative data; foster care;
kinship foster care; logistic
regression
Andrew Grogan-Kaylor, PhD, is
assistant professor, College of Social
Work, University of Kentucky, 639
Patterson Office Tower, Lexington, KY
40506; e-mail: agk@pop.uky.edu. An
earlier version of this article was
presented at a meeting of the Council on
Social Work Education, March 2000,
San Francisco.
132 Social
CCC Work Research$3.00
Code:1070-5309/00 / Volume 24,National
© 2000,
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F
oster care is a large, growing, and often un-
derstudied social services program (Courtney,
1994c). The number of children in out-of-
home care is clearly rising. Although there is
no centralized national registry of these chil-
dren, all 50 states annually provide information on
their out-of-home care populations to the Volun-
tary Cooperative Information Service (VCIS) of the
American Public Human Services Association. Ac-
cording to VCIS information, the number of chil-
dren in out-of-home care has steadily grown from
262,000 in 1982, to 400,000 in 1990, to 507,000
in 1996 (personal communication with P. Shapiro,
American Public Human Services Association, Janu-
ary 15, 1999). 1997 and 1998 data are not currently
available (Shapiro).
One aspect of the substantial growth in the num-
ber of children in out-of-home care in recent years
is the rise in what has come to be known as kinship
care. Kinship care is a particular form of family fos-
ter care in which children are placed with foster par-
ents who are biologically related to them. Certainly,
it is true that throughout history kin often have cared
for children on an informal basis. However, kinship
care refers to a “formal” arrangement in which care
for a child is legally transferred through a court or-
der to the child welfare system, and in which the
child’s kin become his or her foster parents. Most
often, these kinship foster parents are grandparents
of the child or an aunt or uncle. Less often, these
kinship foster parents are older siblings or some other
relatives of the child. Some limited research suggests
that kinship foster parents are more likely to be older,
to be African American, and to have lower incomes
than nonkin foster parents (Berrick, Barth, &
Needell, 1994). Since the early part of the 1980s,
kinship care has grown from a relatively rare form of
child welfare placement to a very common one
Number 3 / September
Association 2000
of Social Workers, Inc.
(Berrick et al., 1994; Berrick, Needell, & Minkler,
1999; Dubowitz et al., 1994; Gleeson & Craig, 1994;
Goerge, Wulczyn, & Harden, 1994; Scannapieco &
Hegar, 1999; Takas, 1992).
GROWTH OF KINSHIP FOSTER CARE
It often is argued that kinship care is a way for
the child welfare system to deal with growing num-
bers of children in need of out-of-home care place-
ments (Barth & Berry, 1994; Berrick, 1998; Gleeson
& Craig, 1994). As noted, the number of children
in need of foster homes has grown during the past
decade. However, the number of available licensed
foster homes has steadily declined nationwide dur-
ing the same decade. In an article on the “Foster
Family Shortage” the Child Welfare League of
America (1995) reported that the number of family
foster homes declined from “147,000 in 1985 to
125,000 in 1994.” Placement with kin may thus
represent a way of finding new foster homes at a
time when the child welfare system is confronted
with increasing demands for its services in the face
of declining resources.
The way for growth in kinship care also has been
paved by developments in federal legislation. En-
acted in 1980, the Adoption Assistance and Child
Welfare Act of 1980 (P.L. 96-272) requires child
welfare authorities to plan for a placement for a child
that provides permanency and to evaluate these plans
regularly through a set of administrative and court
hearings. The act also mandates that a child be placed
in the most familylike and least restrictive setting
possible. In accordance with these guidelines, P.L.
96-272 expresses a clear preference for children’s
placement with relatives when possible (Pecora,
Whittaker, Maluccio, Barth, & Plotnick, 1992).
Another factor commonly considered to have
contributed to a rise in kinship foster care placements
was the set of legal decisions culminating in the Su-
preme Court’s decision in Miller v. Youakim in 1979
(Takas, 1992). The focus of the Supreme Court’s
decision was on whether relatives providing care for
children who had been removed from their parents
were entitled to the same foster care payments as
were nonrelative foster parents (Takas, 1992; Testa,
1997). The Court determined that if the child was
removed from an AFDC-eligible (Aid to Families
with Dependent Children) family and the kinship
foster parents were approved by state child welfare
authorities, then the kinship foster parents were eli-
gible for payments under Title IV-E of the Social
Security Act (Gleeson, 1996; Testa, 1997). Thus,
these kinship foster parents were entitled to the same
Who goes into kinship care? The relationship of child and family characteristics to placement into kinship foster care / Grogan-Kaylor
payment as nonrelative foster parents. In turn, the
state would be reimbursed for these payments with
federal money (see Gleeson, 1996; Testa, 1997, for
review). The Court’s decision is commonly seen as
providing a major impetus for the growth of kin-
ship care placements (Takas, 1992; Testa, 1997).
Finally, kinship foster care also may have become
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a more common form of child welfare placement
because of the growing attention to the need to place
a child with foster parents who share the child’s cul-
tural background (Hegar, 1999; Stehno, 1990).
Placing a child with kin satisfies this need (Hegar,
1999; Scannapieco & Hegar, 1996; Wilson &
Chipungu, 1996).
RESEARCH ON KINSHIP FOSTER CARE
Research about the relationship of child and fam-
ily characteristics to whether a child is initially placed
in kinship foster care may be seen as part of a larger
research agenda that has used administrative child
welfare data to examine the pathways that children
take through the foster care system. Much atten-
tion has been devoted to how some of the outcomes
of children in kinship care compare with outcomes
of children in other kinds of child welfare placements.
For example, researchers have found that children
placed in kinship foster care are reunified more slowly
from foster care than children who are placed in fos-
ter homes with nonrelatives (Barth & Berry, 1994;
Courtney, 1994b; Goerge et al., 1994; Scannapieco,
1999; Testa, 1997). Research also has found that
placement in kinship care is associated with fewer
changes of foster care placement than placement in
foster care with nonrelatives (Courtney & Needell,
1997) and that children who are placed in kinship
foster care are less likely to enter group homes sub-
sequently than children who are placed in foster care
with nonrelatives (Courtney, 1994a). In addition,
research has indicated that once discharged from fos-
ter care, children who were placed in kinship foster
care were less likely to re-enter foster care than chil-
dren who were placed in other kinds of child wel-
fare settings (Courtney, 1995; Courtney & Needell,
1997). However, little attention has been paid to
the question of how children who are initially placed
in kinship care are different from children who are
placed in other kinds of child welfare placements.
The aim of this research was to examine the rela-
tionship of child and family characteristics to whether
children were placed in kinship foster care or in some
other form of out-of-home care, using data on all
children placed in out-of-home care in California
between 1989 and 1996.
133
 The study analyzed the relationship of a number
of variables to a child’s placement in kinship care,
including the age, gender, and race of the child;
whether the child was removed from an AFDC-eli-
gible family; the primary reason for which the child
was removed from his or her caregivers; whether the
child had an evident health problem at the time of
placement; the family members with whom the child
was living at the time of removal; and the county in
which the child was placed under the care of the
child welfare system. Because this research was largely
exploratory, no specific hypotheses were generated
before the analysis.
THE DATA
The data used in this analysis represent an ex-
tract from administrative data of the child welfare
system of the state of California. The extract was
created by generating a data set containing an ob-
servation for every child entering foster care for the
first time between January 1, 1989, and December
31, 1996. Then, a 10 percent random sample (N =
21,560) was drawn from the data set to yield a
smaller data set that was more amenable to analysis.
Because administrative requirements mandate that
data be entered for each child, there is relatively little
missing data. Data from California may shed some
light on foster care on a national level because the
out-of-home care caseload of California represents
approximately one-fifth of the nation’s foster care
caseload (Barth & Berry, 1994).
These data present an opportunity to examine
the characteristics of children who are initially placed
in kinship care and to compare the characteristics of
these children with children who are placed in other
forms of out-of-home care. The data contain infor-
mation on a child’s first placement under the care of
the child welfare system when that child was removed
from the care of his or her family. The data also in-
dicate whether the placement was in a kinship foster
home or in some form of nonkin care such as a
nonrelative foster home, a group home, or a resi-
dential treatment center.
The VCIS data (Shapiro, 1999) contain a number
of variables that might conceivably be related to a
child’s initial placement. The variables that were in-
cluded in the data set used in this analysis were se-
lected so that they were likely to be reliable and valid.
Following the work of Courtney (1994b), variables
were included on the basis of “the simplicity of the
items (e.g. gender, age, region), by the fact that some
items are used to comply with federal reporting re-
quirements and because reporting of some items is
134 Social Work Research / Volume 24, Number 3 / September 2000
required for either the county or the provider to be
reimbursed for services rendered (e.g. AFDC eligi-
bility, placement type, placement dates)” (p. 84).
The distributions of the independent variables in
the data are summarized in Table 1. The data con-
tain information on the child’s age and gender and
whether the child was white, African American,
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Latino, or of another racial or ethnic identity. The
data also indicate whether the child had any health
problem at the time of placement. Information on
health problems in this data set was provided by the
child’s social worker at the time the child was placed
and thus does not represent a formal diagnosis by a
health care provider.
The data also contain a fair amount of informa-
tion about the home from which the child was re-
moved when he or she was placed under the care of
the child welfare system. There is information on the
family member (mother, father, both parents, or other
relative) from whom the child was removed when
the child was initially placed in out-of-home care.
There is also information on whether the family
member who was caring for the child was receiving
AFDC at the time that the child was removed. In
addition, there is information on the type of county
in which the child was placed. The information in the
data set indicates whether the placement was in a
rural county, in Los Angeles, in an urban county
other than Los Angeles, or in an urban–rural county.
Urban counties were defined as urban counties other
than Los Angeles. Rural counties were defined as
counties with no population center over 50,000.
Urban–rural counties were defined as counties with
large rural populations and at least one population
center over 50,000.
The data contain a record of the “primary reason
for placement.”—the type of maltreatment that led
to the removal of the child from his or her caregivers.
Although these data are generally good indicators of
the reasons children were removed from their par-
ents, some caution must be used in interpreting the
primary reason for placement because multiple types
of maltreatment are not reported. In addition, in
cases in which a child was both neglected and physi-
cally abused, social workers often indicate that the
primary reason for placement is physical abuse be-
cause physical abuse is often easier to substantiate
than neglect (Courtney, 1994b).
LIMITATIONS OF THE DATA
Although the data provide information about the
placement of nearly one-fifth of the children in the
nation who entered out-of-home care between 1989
 dren in foster care nationwide, the data are not a
TABLE 1—Distribution of Independent Variables
national probability sample of children in foster care.
Variable %
California is likely to be different from the nation in
a number of unknown ways.
Gender A second limitation is that the data were extracted
Female 52.75 from administrative records of the child welfare sys-
Male 47.25 tem in California. Thus, they do not contain other

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Race or ethnicity information that could conceivably be of interest in
White 40.77 examining the settings in which children were placed.
African American 25.65 For example, the data do not contain any informa-
Latino 29.95 tion on mental health, substance abuse, or behav-
Other race 3.55 ioral problems experienced by children entering out-
Health of-home care. They also do not contain information
Health problem 7.27 on the mental health or substance abuse problems
No health problem 92.73 of children’s parents.
Primary reason for placement In addition, the data do not contain any infor-
Neglect 67.74 mation on whether kin were available to take care of
Physical abuse 15.72 children who needed to be removed from the care
Sexual abuse 8.71
of their parents. Arguably, the presence of kin in a
Other reason 7.83
family’s social network, and the willingness and abil-
Type of county placed in
ity of those kin to care for a child, would be vari-
Urban 35.03
ables of key importance in determining which chil-
Urban–rural 19.08
dren are placed with kin and which are not.
Los Angeles 38.09
Also, the data do not contain a direct measure of
Rural 7.11
the income of the family from which a child was
AFDC receipt
removed. Familial income is correlated with the type
Receiving AFDC 50.86
of maltreatment in which a family is involved (Jones
Not receiving AFDC 49.14
& McCurdy, 1992; Sedlak, 1996). The data do pro-
Family member removed from at time of placement
vide information on whether a family was receiving
Parents 17.63
Mother 75.61
AFDC at the time that the child was placed, and
Father 4.46
AFDC was, by definition, a program that provided
Other relative 2.31
assistance only to families who had fallen below a
Age (years) certain standard of need. However, AFDC eligibil-
Birth to 1 23.05 ity remains only an imperfect measure of familial
1–3 21.24 poverty.
4–7 20.43 Finally, it must be remembered that because these
8–12 14.93 data were drawn from administrative child welfare
Over 12 20.36 records, the data provide information only on chil-
Year entered care dren who enter the care of the child welfare system.
1989 13.18 These data contain records only of formal child wel-
1990 12.24 fare placements in which children were placed through
1991 11.67 a court order. Informal arrangements in which chil-
1992 11.52 dren were placed with kin but were not placed through
1993 12.62 a court order are not included in these data.
1994 12.96
1995 12.58
METHOD
1996 13.23 The outcome of interest in this analysis was
NOTE: AFDC = Aid to Families with Dependent Children. whether a child’s first placement was in a kinship
home or some other kind of facility. This other kind
of facility might be a family foster home or a con-
and 1996, there are some important limitations to gregate care setting of some kind, such as a group
the data. First, although children in foster care in home or a residential treatment center. Characteristics
California represent a significant proportion of chil- of children and their families that are likely to lead

Who goes into kinship care? The relationship of child and family characteristics to placement into kinship foster care / Grogan-Kaylor 135
to a child’s placement in group care have been ex-
plored in an earlier study using administrative data
from California (Courtney, 1994a).
Because this placement outcome is dichotomous,
logistic regression was chosen as the method for data
analysis. Logistic regression allows the analyst to
examine the contribution that each of a number of
independent variables made to the log odds that
children would enter kinship care rather than some
other kind of child welfare placement while control-
ling for the effects of other independent variables.
Coefficients from a logistic regression model can be
exponentiated to provide an intuitively understand-
able measure of each independent variable’s unique
effect on the odds ratio of the dependent variable in
the model.
The first step in data analysis was to examine the
contribution of each particular domain of indepen-
dent variable to the outcome of interest. Each vari-
able or set of variables from the data that might logi-
cally have a possible influence on whether a child
would be placed in kinship care rather than some
other kind of placement was examined using a con-
tingency table with a chi-square test (Table 2).
These simple contingency tables and their asso-
ciated chi-square statistics revealed some interest-
ing information. The sample was almost equally di-
vided among males and females. At this simple
bivariate level, gender did not show a statistically
significant association with whether a child was
placed in kinship care rather than some other kind
of child welfare placement. The sample also was eth-
nically diverse. White children made up just over 40
percent of the sample; African American children
accounted for 25.65 percent, Latino children, for
29.95 percent; and children of other races and
ethnicities, for approximately 3.55 percent. The race
or ethnicity of the child did show a statistically sig-
nificant association with whether a child was placed
in kinship care. Slightly more than 7 percent of the
children had a documented health problem at the
time that they were placed. The relationship between
whether a child had a health problem and a child’s
foster care placement was also statistically significant.
Despite the difficulty sometimes associated with
documenting neglect, neglect was the primary rea-
son for placement for approximately two-thirds
(67.74 percent) of the children in the data set. The
next largest category of children was when the pri-
mary reason for placement was physical abuse (15.72
percent), followed by sexual abuse (8.71 percent)
and other forms of maltreatment (7.83 percent). The
relationship between a child’s reason for placement
136 Social Work Research / Volume 24, Number 3 / September 2000
in foster care and whether a child was placed in kin-
ship care was also statistically significant.
The majority of children in this data set were re-
moved from single-parent families in which the
mother was the primary caregiver (75.61 percent).
Much smaller percentages of children were living
with two-parent families (17.63 percent), their fa-
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thers only (4.46 percent), or another relative (2.31
percent) at the time of their removal. The relation-
ship between the type of family situation from which
the child was removed and whether the child was
placed in kinship care was also statistically signifi-
cant. Approximately one-half (50.86 percent) of the
families were receiving AFDC at the time that their
child was removed from their care. AFDC was sig-
nificantly associated with whether a child was placed
in kinship care at the bivariate level.
The greatest percentage (38.09 percent) of the
children in this data set was placed in Los Angeles
county. However, a significant percentage (35.03
percent) also was placed in an urban county other
than Los Angeles. Smaller percentages (19.08 per-
cent) of children were placed in urban–rural coun-
ties, whereas only a few children (7.11 percent) were
placed in rural counties. Region of placement was
significantly related to whether a child was placed in
kinship care or in some other form of care.
Age in this data was coded as a categorical vari-
able. This categorical variable indicated whether the
child was in one of five age groups: (1) birth up to
just under one year (infants), (2) one to three years
(3) four to seven years (4) eight to 12 years, and (5)
over 12 years. One noteworthy aspect of these data
was the large number of infants entering care. Al-
most a quarter (23.05 percent) of the children in the
data were infants. Several analysts (Courtney, 1994a;
Wulczyn, 1994; Wulczyn & Goerge, 1992) have
commented on the fact that over the course of the
1980s infants became a larger and larger part of the
out-of-home care population. Disturbingly, Courtney
(1994a) documented a rise in the number of infants
being placed in congregate care settings, such as group
homes or residential treatment centers. Age was sig-
nificantly related to placement in kinship care.
The data set also contained the year in which a
child entered foster care. In a simple contingency
table, this variable did not show a statistically sig-
nificant relationship with whether a child was placed
in a kinship foster home.
MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS
Logistic regression was then used to examine the
relationships of particular independent variables to
TABLE 2—Bivariate Contingency Table for Care Placement Factors

Variable Kinship Care Other Form of Care χ2 (df) p

Gender .2415(1) .623
Female 3,855 7,517
Male 3,486 6,702

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Race or ethnicity 275.927(3) <.001
White 2,579 6,212
African American 2,246 3,284
Latino 2,357 4,100
Other race 159 623
Health 149.070(1) <.001
Health problem 313 1,254
No health problem 7,028 12,965
Primary reason for placement 172.161(3) <.001
Neglect 5,362 9,243
Physical abuse 1,023 2,367
Sexual abuse 567 1,310
Other reason 389 1,299
Type of county placed in 1055.255(3) <.001
Urban 1,842 5,710
Urban–rural 1,291 2,973
Los Angeles 3,866 4,346
Rural 342 1,190
AFDC receipt 97.509(1) <.001
Receiving AFDC 3,390 7,575
Not receiving AFDC 3,951 6,644
Family member removed from at time of placement 459.217(3) <.001
Parents 786 3,014
Mother 6,171 10,130
Father 284 678
Other relative 100 397
Age (years) 303.410(4) <.001
Birth to 1 1,371 3,599
1–3 1,771 2,809
4–7 1,825 2,579
8–12 1,254 1,964
Over 12 1,120 3,269
Year entered care 7.679(7) .362
1989 949 1,893
1990 907 1,732
1991 841 1,674
1992 850 1,634
1993 926 1,795
1994 987 1,807
1995 954 1,759
1996 927 1,925
NOTE: AFDC = Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
the odds ratio of being placed in a kinship home,
while controlling for the effects of the other vari-
ables in the model.
Because of the large sample size, it was consid-
ered likely that many second- or higher-order inter-
action terms would have emerged as statistically sig-
nificant in this model. However, interpretation of
this study was exploratory, no interaction terms were
explicitly tested in this model. The logistic regres-
sion model was developed by entering all the avail-
able main effects terms into the model.
The final logistic regression model revealed a
number of interesting effects (Table 3). Gender of a
child was not significant in a simple chi-square analy-

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interaction terms can become difficult if this inter- sis and did not become statistically significant in the
pretation is not driven by a conceptual framework multivariate model. However, the relationship of a
based in the empirical research literature. Because child’s race and whether a child would enter kinship

TABLE 3—Final Logit Model on Care Determinants

Variable Logit Coefficient SE p Effect on Odds

Gender
Female .033 .031 .288 1.03
Race
African American .427 .039 <.001 1.53
Latino .148 .037 <.001 1.16
Other race –.333 .097 .001 .72
Health problem (no health problem)
Health problem –.556 .069 <.001 .57
Primary reason for placement (neglect)
Physical abuse –.162 .044 <.001 .85
Sexual abuse –.194 .057 .001 .82
Other reason –.616 .063 <.001 .54
Type of county placed in (urban)
Urban–rural .291 .045 <.001 1.34
Los Angeles .835 .040 <.001 2.30
Rural .017 .070 .804 1.02
AFDC receipt (not receiving)
Receiving AFDC –.430 .031 <.001 .65
Family member removed from (both parents)
Mother .424 .049 <.001 1.53
Father .327 .085 <.001 1.39
Other relative –.114 .123 .356 .89
Age at placement (less than 1 year)
1–3 years .555 .047 <.001 1.74
4–7 years .658 .047 <.001 1.93
8–12 years .591 .052 <.001 1.81
Over 12 years –.071 .051 .159 .93
Year of entry (1989)
1990 .089 .060 .137 1.09
1991 .086 .061 .159 1.09
1992 .096 .061 .118 1.10
1993 .078 .060 .192 1.08
1994 .216 .059 <.001 1.24
1995 .186 .060 .002 1.20
1996 .017 .060 .782 1.02
Constant –1.677 .072 <.001 .19
NOTES: Reference categories are in parentheses. AFDC = Aid to Families with Dependent Children.

138 Social Work Research / Volume 24, Number 3 / September 2000

care was statistically significant. Compared with
white children, African American children were 1.53
times as likely to enter kinship care and Latino chil-
dren 1.16 times more likely, whereas the likelihood
of entering kinship care for children of other races
and ethnicities was not statistically significantly dif-
ferent from that for white children.
Receiving AFDC, which had been significant in
the bivariate contingency table, also emerged as sig-
nificant in the multivariate model. Children who
were removed from families that had been receiving
AFDC at the time that the child was removed were
.65 times as likely to have been placed in kinship
care as children removed from families that had not
been receiving AFDC. One explanation may be that
families who were receiving AFDC were, by defini-
tion, poor and therefore may have been part of ex-
tended families that also were poor. Thus, it may be
the case that families who were receiving AFDC were
likely to have relatives who would be economically
unable to take on the care of an extra child, even
with the addition of a foster care payment.
Observed health problems also tended to decrease
the probability that a child would be placed with
kin, and this relationship was statistically significant.
Some limited research suggests that kinship foster
parents may be older and less well-off economically
than nonkin foster parents (Berrick et al., 1994). It
may be that in cases in which children have obvious
and easily identifiable health problems these health
problems may represent a daunting financial bur-
den to kin, and thus kin are less likely to come for-
ward to provide assistance in such cases.
A child’s primary reason for placement also was
statistically significantly related to the probability that
a child would be placed in kinship care. All forms of
maltreatment were compared with neglect, which is
the most common form of child maltreatment
(Sedlak, 1996). The results of the analysis suggest
that, controlling for the other variables in the model,
children removed from families in which the primary
reason for removal was neglect were more likely to
be placed in kinship care than children removed from
their families for other reasons.
The finding that families who neglect their chil-
dren are the most likely to have their children placed
with kin may have to do with decisions made by
child welfare social workers. When a child is removed
from his or her parents for reasons of neglect, place-
ment with kin may be highly desirable because, given
that neglect is primarily a passive form of maltreat-
ment, the welfare of the child is not endangered if
he or she remains in contact with his or her biologi-
Who goes into kinship care? The relationship of child and family characteristics to placement into kinship foster care / Grogan-Kaylor
cal parents. Indeed, by facilitating visitation between
a child and his or her biological parents, placement
with kin may allow the formation of a stronger par-
ent–child bond that may result in the eventual re-
turn home of the child. However, when a child has
been removed from his or her home because of physi-
cal or sexual abuse, there are stronger reasons to
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ensure that there is a protective separation between
the parent and the child. In such cases, child welfare
workers may decide that placement with kin is not
appropriate, even when kin are available and willing
to take care of the child.
An interesting set of results emerged in the analy-
sis of the types of families from which children were
removed. The majority of children in the data were
children who had been removed from mother-only
households. Children removed from these house-
holds were significantly more likely to be placed with
kin than children removed from both parents. Chil-
dren who were removed from their fathers only were
also significantly more likely to be placed with kin
than children removed from both parents. Children
who were removed from the home of a relative other
than their parents were no less likely to be placed in
a kinship foster home than children who were re-
moved from both parents. Thus, when children were
removed from the home of a relative other than their
parents, they were less likely to be placed in kinship
care than children removed from either their mother
only or their father only. This is an instance where
more data on the presence or absence of kin in a
family’s social network would be of some use. The
fact that removal from the home of a relative re-
duces the probability of being placed in a kinship
home may mean that these represent situations where
informal placement with kin has been tried already
by the family and has broken down, resulting in the
removal of the child. The fact that removal from
mother- and father-only families results in increased
probability of placement in a kin home is more dif-
ficult to interpret but may be related to the type of
kin networks available to mother-only families.
There was also a statistically significant relation-
ship between the type of county in which children
were placed and whether children were placed in
kinship foster care. As noted, counties were divided
into four categories: (1) Los Angeles county, (2)
other urban counties, (3) rural counties, and (4)
urban–rural counties. Rural counties were not sig-
nificantly different from urban counties in their de-
gree of influence on the likelihood of children be-
ing placed in a kinship home. Children in counties
that were defined as a mixture of urban and rural
139
were 1.34 times more likely than children in urban
counties to be placed in a kinship home. Being placed
in Los Angeles county made a child the most likely
to be placed in kinship care. Children placed in Los
Angeles county were 2.30 times as likely as children
in other urban counties to be placed in kinship
homes.
This strong relationship of placement in Los An-
geles to placement in kinship foster care may be due
to several factors. First, Los Angeles is a large, densely
populated metropolitan area. Thus, it is possible that
in Los Angeles families who come into contact with
the child welfare system are more likely to live closer
to their kin than do families in other California coun-
ties and also may have stronger ties to their kin. It is
also possible that there is something unique about
the child welfare system in Los Angeles county that
distinguishes it from child welfare systems in other
counties.
Age was significant in determining whether a child
would be placed with kin. In this model, children in
several different age groups were contrasted with
children who were less than one year of age. As noted
earlier, several authors (Courtney, 1994a; Wulczyn,
1994; Wulczyn & Goerge, 1992) have raised con-
cerns about the recent rise in the number of infants
who have been placed in out-of-home care. If kin-
ship care is emerging as a new form of foster care
placement that is preferable because it provides greater
permanency and a more familylike environment for
children, it might be hoped that infants, who surely
represent one of the more vulnerable populations of
children placed in out-of-home care, would be placed
most often in kinship care. However, infants were
less likely to be placed in kinship care than all age
categories except for children over 12 years. This
may be because infants require much time and atten-
tion from caregivers. Potential kinship foster par-
ents, who may be older and poorer than traditional
foster parents, may be reluctant or unable to take on
the task of caring for such children.
Finally, there was a relatively weak relationship
of the year a child entered foster care and whether a
child was placed in kinship foster care or in some
other kind of out-of-home care arrangement. In
most years the relationship of entry year to place-
ment in kinship foster care was not statistically sig-
nificant. Entry year became statistically significant
only in 1994 and 1995 but was not significant in
1996. The odds ratios for 1994 and 1995 suggest
that in these years, placement in kinship care be-
came increasingly common. This relationship of the
year in which a child entered foster care to place-
140 Social Work Research / Volume 24, Number 3 / September 2000
ment in kinship foster care may be due to several
reasons. Maybe the shortage of available foster
homes became more severe over time, making child
welfare agencies more inclined to place children in
kinship foster care because they could not find other
suitable out-of-home placements. Alternatively, there
is some evidence to indicate that for some child
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welfare professionals kinship foster care is becom-
ing a preferred form of foster care placement
(Berrick, 1998; Ingram, 1996), and the increasing
likelihood of placement in kinship foster care in later
years, evident in this analysis, may be a result of that
trend. However, such trends are difficult to recon-
cile with the fact that entry into foster care in 1996
was not significant in predicting placement in kin-
ship foster care. Further investigation of the nature
of this cohort relationship is needed.
CONCLUSION
Placement in kinship care is influenced by a num-
ber of variables. These variables involve a number of
characteristics of the children and families who come
into contact with the child welfare system, such as a
child’s age, gender, and race as well as the type of
maltreatment for which the child was removed from
his or her family. A somewhat disturbing trend indi-
cated by the analysis is that infants, the most vulner-
able of children, were some of the least likely to be
placed with kin. Children under the age of one year
were less likely to be placed in kinship care than any
other age group except for children over 12 years.
Similarly, children with health problems were much
less likely to be placed with kin than children who
did not have such problems. Also, the model sug-
gests that children removed from families receiving
AFDC were less likely to be placed with kin, per-
haps indicating that poverty decreases the likelihood
of placement with relatives.
Placement in kinship care also is related to vari-
ables that appear to be more connected to the com-
munities in which children live. The statistically sig-
nificant relationship of county of placement and
placement in kinship care is likely to be related to
both neighborhood characteristics of different coun-
ties as well as characteristics of the child welfare sys-
tems of different counties in California.
The use of administrative data in analyses such as
this often raises as many questions as it answers. Al-
though the relationship of placement in kinship fos-
ter care to variables such as age, race, and health of
child, reason for removal, or county of placement
are intriguing, it is sometimes difficult to interpret
some of these findings without having more detailed
information about the economic circumstances, so-
cial support networks, physical and mental health,
and substance abuse problems of families who come
into contact with the child welfare system. Yet be-
cause of the large sample sizes involved, administra-
tive data often allow the researcher to observe large-
scale trends in the child welfare system that would
be difficult to detect in studies with smaller samples.
Such large scale analyses need to be complemented
by studies with smaller sample sizes, which collect
more fine-grained and detailed information on the
placement of children in kinship care. ■
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Original manuscript received July 28, 1999
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Accepted March 6, 2000
141