State Kinship Bulletins and Policies Pennsylvania bulletins serve as a roadmap for county agencies to follow state statutes and regulations. Bulletins guide organizations on decision-making and provide the rationale for why they should follow the recommended actions. The Office of Children, Youth, and Families has many bulletins that direct counties in their policies and protocols, found in Pennsylvania Bulletin . The primary bulletin that relates to kinship caregiving while in agency custody is the Kinship Care Policy bulletin issued in 2003, which defines formal and informal kinship care and establishes policies and procedures to follow when considering kinship families as potential placement resources for children. Next, regarding relevancy, is the Child Placements with Emergency Caregivers bulletin which defines the procedural steps an agency must follow if it is placing a child in a potential kinship home in an emergency. xvii There also are indicators the caregiver must demonstrate to be considered as an emergency placement option and qualify for full foster care licensure. However, this bulletin, drafted in 2004, is considerably outdated and provides an opening for counties to utilize personal belief systems when making decisions on whether a caregiver may be appropriate or can be disqualified. Like the Chapter 3700 regulations, there are indicators that are not adequately defined and are considerably subjective in a county’s determination, such as if the caregiver’s health or commitments outside the home may impact their ability. Incredibly subjective and non-defined questions can be interpreted in several ways. Prior history such as neglect or domestic violence, which may have been remediated but can still be used in a county’s decision making, can automatically disqualify an appropriate caregiver. Unnecessary Denial Case Study Naomi was disqualified due to a 30-year-old criminal conviction for welfare fraud. The worker insisted Naomi identify another family member to take her grandchildren – whose mother had overdosed and whose father was in jail – so they would not end up in a stranger’s foster home. Naomi never received written documentation of her denial and was unable to request review, despite the children ending up with a distant cousin with whom the children were not close.
When kin are given written documentation indicating that they are being denied the ability to be a formal placement resource, they often do not realize that they must provide their appeal to that decision in writing. The first method for appeal is typically at the county child welfare agency level, where the county agency will attempt to remedy the issue independently. The challenge with this level of response is that the agency who is denying them is the same agency who is reviewing their appeal; the county agency is unlikely to change that decision. If the appeal is not resolved at the county agency level, the complaint is to be sent to the state’s Bureau of Hearings and Appeals (BHA) within the Department of Human Services. It is unclear how many appeals are sent to BHA, and how many of those have been overturned or upheld, as well as overall placement outcomes, as this data is not publicly available. Caregivers can also file complaints by notifying the state and having a regional office representative investigate. However, the regional office is typically looking for a violation of state regulations, not whether the decision was appropriate. If the regional office identifies a deviation from regulation, it cannot mandate the county child welfare agency to take a specific action but can only make a recommendation. While county agencies may not violate a regulation, they may make decisions that are not in the best interest of a child. In many cases there is no redress for a kin caregiver as well as for the child who may remain in foster care when a kinship placement is possible and in their best interest. To compound this problem, there is limited guidance for judicial decision-making regarding identifying the most appropriate kin placement for a child. While the Rules of Juvenile Court Procedure require that the court take an active role in ensuring the provision of family finding services, potential kin caregivers do not have a right to be heard in dependency cases, and, as a result, dependency judges may not be made aware of unwarranted kinship denials. There also is no clear mechanism in the Juvenile Act or in the Rules of Juvenile Court Procedure for the court to resolve competing kinship licensing requests. As a result, in practice, county agencies have broad discretion to deny kinship altogether or to select one kinship resource over another without careful consideration as to which resource is preferred by the child and parent or is best situated to advance the case plan goal of reunification.
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Kinship Care in Pennsylvania: Creating an Equitable System for Families – January 2021
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