Exploring Heterogeneity in Kinship Caregivers’ Financial Hardship Experiences and Financial Capabilities

Background and Purpose: Children who are unable to remain in the home of their family of origin and are placed with kinship foster parents can ultimately experience less disruption and stronger family ties than children in non-kinship placements. In fact, over 2.5 million children in the United States are in some type of kinship foster arrangement. However, financial hardship can restrict kinship caregivers from taking in relatives’ children. This study investigated kinship caregivers’ financial standing compared to a national subsample of caregivers and explored whether certain factors moderate the likelihood that a kinship caregiver can provide care for non-relative children without additional financial assistance from the Department of Social Services (DSS).

Methods: This study utilized primary data on the financial circumstances of 345 relatives involved in a kinship care intervention project in North Carolina and nationally representative secondary data on 6,394 individuals. One-sample t-tests and chi-square goodness-of-fit tests were employed to examine the financial standing of kinship caregivers in the sample compared to caregivers nationally. A machine learning approach—i.e., model-based recursive partitioning or MOB— was also leveraged to explore the predictive role of the number of children placed in a kinship caregiver’s home in regards to that kinship caregiver’s ability to care for non-relative children. Moderators include the caregiver’s financial well-being, age, gender, education level, median household income, relation to the child, marital status, employment status, and presence of biological children in the home.

Results: The comparative analyses revealed that caregivers who participated in our study generally fared better financially than caregivers at the national level. However, most of the caregivers in the sample (58%) perceived that they could not financially support non-relative children in their care without additional support from DSS. The MOB results revealed that if an additional child is placed in the home, the caregiver’s perceived capacity to provide care without additional DSS support decreased by approximately 19%, with a greater decrease (35%) among a subgroup of caregivers with low financial well-being status. Additional subgroups emerged from the MOB analysis, including the age of the kinship caregiver. While the caregiver’s financial well-being status was the primary moderator of the caregivers’ perceived ability to support children, the interactive role of age was also revealed. Caregivers older than 38 years, despite having a high average financial well-being score and a household income over the median in NC, appeared to have 22% lower odds of reporting the ability to support a relative's child as the number of children placed in their homes by DSS increases.

Conclusion and Implications: The study results reinforce that helping kinship caregivers access financial resources remains central to children’s outcomes. The intersectionality of caregiver characteristics, such as socioeconomic status and age, must be considered to truly understand the most crucial support for this population. The heterogeneity in caregivers’ experiences and financial capacities buttresses the need for nuanced interventions and programs targeting these caregivers, enabling them to provide more stable care for children placed in their homes.