Connecting with kin in Ohio
This story is one of a series written in connection with our 2024 Signature Report, A season of hope: Growing the role of families, which focuses on the importance of kin for children in foster care.
Among the many services Kinnect offers are family search and engagement, kinship and adoption navigation, support for youth in or after foster care, and training to create an affirming culture for LGBTQ+ youth.
Its Kinnect to Family program has helped 3,000 families with an intense family search and engagement service that promises to provide dozens, even hundreds, of family and close kin connections for youth entering foster care. Even if they aren’t a placement option, they might provide transportation or just want to stay connected to help in another way. The average is 150 connections per child.
“They’re always amazed,” says Shannon Deinhart, executive director and co-founder of Kinnect. “Often, a young person has been told there’s no one.”
That sense of belonging and identity is key, says Jonathon Henry, a former Kinnect board member who cared for his own sister after she left residential care as a teen.
Henry, now 32 and a social worker at the Department of Veterans Affairs, was just 24 and still living with his adoptive parents when the opportunity came up to care for his sister Chrishonna Walker. It was a weighty, complex decision to move out on his own, buy his first home and provide for her – but one he knew he had to make.
“Because I had experienced foster care myself, because I had seen some of my siblings experience foster care, because I had worked for children’s services, I didn’t want her to be in a situation with strangers,” he says. “I didn’t want her to feel neglected. I didn’t want her to feel that she wasn’t loved. And so for me, it was a very obvious decision.”
The difference between kinship care and non-relative foster care is like carrying your belongings in a suitcase vs. the plastic trash bag that is so often hurriedly stuffed when a child is removed from their home, Henry says. “When children go into kinship, it’s like, ‘This is my suitcase, this is my home, this is what I’m used to. These are the people that love me.’”
His sister, now 21, describes living with her brother as “an adventure – a good adventure.” The two had to get to know each other again before she decided she would leave her group home placement to live with him.
“Jonathon had a really big effect on who I am,” says Walker, who no longer lives with her brother. “It put me on a different path.” She returned to high school and is studying to be a nurse before pursuing her goal of owning a salon.
She admires that her brother, after taking care of her, “just kept going.” He adopted two boys, now 18 and 16, and is fostering two other teens.
Even if the decision to be a kinship caregiver is easy, actually providing that care can be difficult. Many would-be caregivers don’t have the necessary financial or other resources they need to follow their hearts and choose the option that provides the best outcomes for young people.
“There is a huge difference of what support you’re going to get as a kinship provider,” Henry says. “And unfortunately, it deters a lot of people from wanting to take in their kin, knowing, hey, I might not get any food stamps, I might not get any housing benefits, I might not be able to get a clothing voucher.” Because of his knowledge and experience as a social worker, he decided to get licensed as a foster parent so he could access those formal benefits when caring for his sister.
“I do feel like it’s becoming a lot more normal for states to provide their kinship providers more support,” he acknowledges. “It’s just still not where it should be. We’ve got a ways to go.”
Through partnerships with the state and Ohio’s 88 counties, Kinnect is a hub that helps families access the services and supports they need.
“My advice to other states who want to emphasize a kin-first culture,” says Kristi Burre,
Kinnect’s director of strategy, “is don’t wait. We don’t have the luxury of waiting. There are kids right now who need … to find their family members and to help them understand who they are.”