California is leading the way in putting kinship at the center of its child welfare work, whether it’s ensuring kinship caregivers receive the same supports as nonrelative caregivers, reforming payment rates based on need rather than placement type, or supporting counties as they work to improve family engagement. With a kinship placement rate of 38% in 2021, the state is in the top 20 and above the national average. We asked Secretary of the California Health & Human Services Agency Kim Johnson (who was serving as director of California’s Department of Social Services at the time of this interview), and Deputy Director of Children and Family Services Angie Schwartz to talk about the state’s emphasis on kinship care and what it takes to make the shift.

The following are excerpts from our conversations. Answers are edited for length and clarity.

In your mind, what role does kinship care play among all the tools used to keep children safe?

Secretary Kim Johnson: Firstly, we are about keeping families together whenever possible. Having a kin-first culture is about ensuring that when we can’t keep youth directly with their families for their own safety and well-being, they are still with those who love them.

And we’re not just talking about direct biological relationships. We’re talking about adults in the child’s life who love the child and have that connection.

Deputy Director Angie Schwartz: Kinship care is the primary tool in our toolbox. It’s where kids do best. We know this. We know that the informal support of relatives can help stabilize a family so that the child never has to be removed from the parent in the first place. And if they do have to be removed due to the decision of child welfare, relatives are the first choice for placement.

That’s under federal law; it’s under state law. But we also know from the data how much better children fare when they have first placements with relatives. We know how much more stable they are, how much more likely they are to reunify with their birth parents, how much more often they stay with their entire sibling group, how much less stigma there is for the child, how much better they do in terms of educational outcomes, and how many fewer interactions they have with homelessness and juvenile justice systems.

Kinship care obviously benefits children in care, but what benefits are there to an agency for prioritizing placement with kin?

Secretary Johnson: At the macro level, there are benefits to the state of California as it relates to costs associated with youth in care, because this approach is leading to better outcomes. This is a cost-saver compared to interventions and involvement with other systems in the future.

At the county level [which is how California’s child welfare system is run], I think the agencies are being intentional about creating capacity within their communities to meet the individual needs of each youth and being able to have that infrastructure and support for the families. So I would say there are benefits to counties at a community level as well.

How did kinship care come to be the primary option for children and youth coming into care?

Secretary Johnson: In California we’ve gone from a child welfare system with a heavy reliance on congregate care to more family placements. This is something that we’ve been focused on for a very long time. And I continue to underscore that we have to lead with this lens — this kinship lens — for the betterment of children.

Talk to us for a moment about your views on supports for kinship families.

Deputy Director Schwartz: This is an area of ongoing reform. We amended our law [in 2017] so that relatives would get the same level of funding support available as nonrelative foster parents. Before that, most relatives in California — even if they met all the same standards as nonrelatives — often didn’t receive any funding. As a result of the law change, families are eligible for anything that a nonrelative family home is eligible for.

The next thing we did was create the emergency caregiver program, because the regular payments only kicked in once the family was fully approved as a resource placement. That was taking around 180 days, and that’s a long time to go without any funding. We’ve now cut that down and are continuing to work to decrease that time. The emergency caregiver program starts the basic level of funding at the date of placement so that there’s immediate support for that family until the resource family approval is done. Also, we recently unveiled a new rate reform proposal that would restructure rates so that they are based on the needs of each child, not placement type. In short, this proposal would invest directly in family-based placements to help keep youth connected to their relatives and communities of origin by providing increased funding to support their care, supervision, strength building and immediate needs.

What is the Center for Excellence, and what is its role in kinship care in California?

Secretary Johnson: I think all of us can recognize and appreciate that you can have a great policy, but true drivers of change are implementation, application and the policy becoming part of the culture — the standard practice. The Center for Excellence was created to give practitioners an opportunity to have not only the vision and the policy, but also knowledge on how to apply them.

It started with an investment of $150 million for family finding, engagement and support, and it [recently] launched to drive this culture change.

Deputy Director Schwartz: One of the conditions of receiving funds from that investment was that counties have to have full-time dedicated staff that are focused exclusively on family finding, engagement and support. We have found the counties that are the most successful at finding and placing children with family are those that have dedicated folks whose entire job is finding and making sure kids are successful upon placement in those families.

For more on the Center for Excellence in Family Finding, Engagement and Support, check out the California Department of Social Services: www.cdss.ca.gov/inforesources/cdss-programs/foster-care/center-for-excellence