Kinship Care Month: Celebrating the Families Who Step Up for Minnesota Children

When children cannot safely remain with their parents, sometimes the person who steps forward is already someone they know.

A grandparent. An aunt or uncle. An adult sibling. A family friend. A godparent. Or another trusted adult who already has an important place in the child’s life.

September is National Kinship Care Month, an opportunity to recognize these caregivers and the important role they play in providing children with safety, stability, connection, and family.

For CASA Minnesota, recognizing kinship families is particularly important because our mission includes supporting children in both foster and kinship care.

What Is Kinship Care?

Kinship care generally refers to situations in which relatives or people with close family-like relationships provide primary care for a child when the child’s parents are unable to do so.

The Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families recognizes relatives and close family friends who step forward to care for children as an important part of Minnesota’s child welfare system.

Kinship placements can allow children to maintain relationships and connections that already existed before entering care.

That continuity can matter enormously.

Instead of simultaneously losing their home, school, neighborhood, relatives, cultural traditions, and other familiar parts of life, a child living with kin may be able to preserve some of those connections during an otherwise uncertain period.

Minnesota DCYF notes that kinship care can help children maintain sibling relationships and cultural identity while minimizing additional trauma associated with separation.

External Resource:
Minnesota DCYF – Honoring Relatives and Family Friends Who Raise Children in Kinship Care

Kinship Caregivers Need Support Too

Stepping forward to care for a child can happen quickly.

A relative may suddenly find themselves navigating school enrollment, medical appointments, child care, court proceedings, financial responsibilities, transportation, housing needs, and complicated family relationships.

Love for a child doesn’t automatically make those challenges disappear.

That’s why supporting kinship caregivers is also an important part of supporting children.

Minnesota’s Kinship Navigator Program connects relatives and close family friends raising children with resources that may include legal, financial, emotional, health care, housing, food, child care, and community support.

External Resource:
Minnesota DCYF – Kinship Navigator Programs

Resources like these can help caregivers spend less time trying to figure out complicated systems on their own and more time creating stable environments for the children in their care.

Helping Children Experience Childhood

Safety and stability are essential—but children also need opportunities to play, learn, build friendships, discover talents, and simply enjoy being children.

That’s one reason CASA Minnesota created CASA Cares.

CASA Cares provides enrichment grants for eligible Minnesota children in foster and kinship care. The program focuses on helping children MOVE, CONNECT, and LEARN through experiences such as camps, bicycles, swimming, gymnastics, dance, sports, and other enrichment opportunities.

Applications may be submitted by people in a child’s life, including Guardians ad Litem, social workers, foster parents, kinship caregivers, and even eligible children themselves.

Learn more or apply:
CASA Minnesota – CASA Cares

For a grandparent, aunt, uncle, sibling, or family friend suddenly raising a child, these enrichment opportunities can provide valuable support while giving the child experiences that might otherwise be financially difficult to provide.

How Communities Can Support Kinship Families

Recognizing Kinship Care Month should go beyond saying thank you.

We can support kinship families by asking what they actually need.

That could mean connecting caregivers with legal or financial resources, helping with transportation, sharing information about community programs, providing respite, helping children access extracurricular activities, or simply acknowledging the enormous responsibility these families have accepted.

Community organizations, schools, neighbors, faith communities, social workers, volunteers, and advocates can all play a role.

Most importantly, we should remember why kinship caregivers step forward in the first place: a child needs someone.

Across Minnesota, relatives and family friends answer that call every day.

During Kinship Care Month, CASA Minnesota celebrates these caregivers, the children they support, and the powerful role that family and community connections can play in helping children find stability, belonging, and hope.