Kinfirst Connections: Building Kinship Connections for Children in Care

Background:

As research has demonstrated the advantages of kinship care over other forms of placement (Winokur et al. 2018), policies have spread to encourage states to uptake new practices to embrace kinship as the first and only placement (e.g., kin-first approach). Beyond policy changes, new knowledge and skills are needed among child welfare staff to meaningfully implement kin-first approaches, especially because professionals may hold negative stereotypes and biases that contradict kinship principles. While studies have begun documenting promising training for kin caregivers (McPherson et al 2022), research on kinship training for professionals is scarce. As part of a federal initiative on kinship care and shared parenting, one Midwestern state developed and implemented new kinship training for professionals working in child welfare. Our research questions asked whether training participants significantly increased their knowledge and skills for understanding the benefits of kinship; identifying opportunities for supporting parents, kin caregivers, and cultural connections for children; and building action plans to implement identified connection opportunities.

Method:

This study used survey data from kinship training delivered to a pilot site in a Midwestern state (N=91). The pilot organization was a private child welfare provider in a public-private child welfare system. Participants comprised child welfare professionals across the agency, including permanency staff, placement staff, and case managers. Following the training, participants completed a retrospective pre- and post-test framed as “before” and “after the kinship training” about knowledge and skills gained on major training topics: kinship principles, parent connections, kinship connections, and cultural connections. Retrospective pre-tests were applied due to the response shift bias that may occur when training focuses on values-based content that relies on participants’ reflections and insights (Brook et al., 2016). Paired t-tests were used to assess differences in knowledge between the retrospective pre and post-test.

Results:

Participants were predominately women (78%), white (67%), and had an average of 5.9 years’ experience. Paired t-tests revealed higher mean knowledge and skills scores at post-test compared to retrospective pre-test on all topics: applying Kin-First principles (t(90)=-10.8, p=0.000), supporting parent connections (t(90)=-10.2, p=0.000), enabling kinship connections (t(90)=-10.7, p=0.000), and focusing on cultural connections in work with families (t(90)=-10.8, p=0.000).

Implications/Conclusion:

While kinship training is widely recognized as necessary for caregivers, this study was premised on the assumption that child welfare systems must change their culture toward meaningful support and integration of kin. Our findings suggest kinship training is a vital tool to promote kinship principles and the practices that activate them. Kinship training may serve as a professional development tool that builds child welfare professionals’ knowledge and skills that could facilitate successful kinship placements and connections. Moreover, training implementation provides evidence on how professional development tools can inform and change workforce behaviors. Future research is needed to replicate these results beyond this pilot study. It will also be helpful to identify systems and organizational factors that enable the adoption of kinship principles and supportive practices and ultimately investigate the relationship between workers’ training outcomes and family and child outcomes.