Pennsylvania’s child welfare system is responsible for investigating abuse and neglect and providing services that keep families safely together. When children cannot remain at home, placement with kin, otherwise known as relatives or trusted adults with an existing supportive relationship, is widely recognized as the next best option.
Kinship care offers clear advantages, including reduced trauma, greater placement stability, improved emotional and educational outcomes, stronger ties to family and culture, and a higher likelihood of permanency. Despite strong evidence that kinship care leads to better outcomes, it remains significantly underutilized as a foster care option.
Pennsylvania currently licenses kinship caregivers under the same requirements applied to non-relative foster parents. This often leads to kin being disqualified for reasons unrelated to child safety, based on subjective or inconsistent agency decisions rather than state or federal policy. Pennsylvania can and should remove these unnecessary barriers to ensure more children can be raised by someone they know and trust.
The Administration of Children and Families allow for and strongly encourages states to implement less restrictive licensing for kin and relatives, also known as “Kin-specific Licensing”. As of April 2026, 19 states have implemented kin-specific licensing, with their plans being approved by ACF; but Pennsylvania is not yet one of those states.
This legislation will create separate kin-specific licensing standards in Pennsylvania, which reduce non-safety barriers that delay or prevent licensure, support stability and continuity for children, and ensure that caregivers receive financial support sooner.
Kin-specific licensing is a critical step toward increasing the share of Pennsylvania children who, when they cannot remain safely at home, can be placed in the care of someone they know and trust. Please join us in giving children in foster care and their families a better chance of long-term success by signing on to this proposal.