Kinship Care in California: What Relatives Need to Know

When a child is removed from their home in California, the county's first obligation is to look for family. A grandparent, aunt, uncle, older sibling, or family friend may get a call within 24 hours asking them to take a child — sometimes a child they haven't seen in years, sometimes a newborn.

This is kinship care, and the rules are different for relatives than they are for non-related foster families. Here's what you need to understand if you've received that call or you're trying to be prepared for one.

Why Relatives Are Prioritized

California law — specifically Welfare & Institutions Code §16000 — establishes a placement preference hierarchy. When a child is removed, the county must first look to relatives, then to non-relative extended family members (NREFMs), then to approved resource families, and only then to group settings. This preference exists because research consistently shows that placement with relatives reduces trauma and improves long-term outcomes for children.

About 45,000 children are in California's foster care system at any given time. A substantial portion live with relatives — some formally approved, some on emergency placement pending approval.

The Emergency Placement Timeline

Relative caregivers who agree to take a child on an emergency basis don't have to wait for full Resource Family Approval (RFA) before a child comes through the door. Instead:

• A preliminary home safety check and criminal background check (CLETS) is conducted immediately
• The county places the child provisionally
• Within 5 business days, the relative must submit Form RFA-01A (Resource Family Application) and RFA-01B (Criminal Record Statement) to begin the formal RFA process

That five-day window is not optional. Failing to submit on time can jeopardize both the placement and the caregiver's access to emergency funding.

Completing the Full RFA as a Kinship Caregiver

After emergency placement, relatives must complete the full RFA process — the same process that non-relative foster families go through, including training, home safety inspection, background checks, and the family evaluation. The timeline target is 90 days, though in large counties this is routinely exceeded.

For relatives who were not expecting to become caregivers and have no prior involvement with the foster care system, this process can be disorienting. You're simultaneously managing a newly placed child — who may be traumatized, grieving, or have unmet medical needs — while completing paperwork, attending orientation, finishing 12 hours of pre-approval training, and scheduling home inspections.

AB 2830 (2024) requires the CDSS to implement a simplified approval process specifically for kinship caregivers by 2027, acknowledging this reality. That simplification is still being developed, so current relative caregivers navigate the same process as everyone else.

Funding During the Gap: What You're Owed

The gap between emergency placement and full RFA approval is a financial vulnerability for many kinship caregivers. California has two programs to address it:

Emergency Assistance (EA): Short-term bridge funding for relatives with emergency placements who are not yet approved. These payments are smaller than regular foster care rates and have strict timelines.

Approved Relative Caregiver (ARC) Program: Once approved, relatives caring for children who don't meet federal IV-E eligibility requirements receive state-funded ARC payments. These align with standard LOC rates. Without ARC, some relatives would receive nothing for caring for children whose cases don't qualify for federal funding — a gap that unfairly penalized kin caregivers before ARC was created.

Kin-GAP: When Guardianship Is the Right Path

If reunification isn't going to happen and you're not seeking adoption, legal guardianship through the Kinship Guardianship Assistance Program (Kin-GAP) is often the right permanent outcome for relative caregivers.

Kin-GAP works like this:

• The court establishes you as the child's legal guardian
• The child exits the foster care system
• Monthly Kin-GAP payments continue until the child turns 18 (or 21 under extended eligibility)
• You are no longer subject to regular social worker visits and the case supervision structure of active foster care

For grandparents raising grandchildren, or aunts and uncles who have become de facto parents, Kin-GAP provides permanency and stability without the complexity of adoption (which would legally sever the child's relationship with their birth parents — something many kinship caregivers want to avoid).

Background Checks: The Relative Complication

All adults 18 and older in your household must complete LiveScan fingerprinting. DOJ clearances typically take three days; FBI federal clearances take around five days. But any "hit" on a criminal record — even an old misdemeanor, even a charge that was dismissed — triggers an extended review that can take 75 days or more.

For relative caregivers who entered the system quickly due to an emergency, a criminal record issue that might have been resolved in advance with planning can instead cause significant delays and anxiety mid-placement.

What Many Relatives Don't Know to Ask

Based on the common questions in California's kinship care community, three things regularly catch relative caregivers off guard:

1. Placement counts toward permanency: The time a child lives with you during the RFA process counts. If you later adopt or become the legal guardian, the courts take this history into account — you're not starting fresh.

2. You can request a Child and Family Team meeting: CFT meetings are where all stakeholders — including you, the child's social worker, teachers, therapists, and birth parents — discuss the case plan. As a relative caregiver, you have the right to participate in these meetings and have your perspective formally heard.

3. You can advocate for the child's level of care assessment: If the child in your care has documented medical, behavioral, or emotional needs, make sure those needs are reflected in their LOC assessment. This directly affects your monthly payment and access to support services.

The California Foster Care Licensing Guide includes a dedicated section on kinship and relative caregiver pathways — covering the ARC program, Kin-GAP, emergency placement timelines, and how to navigate the RFA process when you were thrown into it overnight rather than planning for months.

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