Kinship Care in Massachusetts: What Relatives Need to Know

In Massachusetts, approximately 39% of children in DCF care are placed with kin — a grandparent, aunt, uncle, older sibling, or other family member who steps in when a parent cannot safely care for their child. If you are a relative facing an emergency DCF contact, or if you are considering getting licensed ahead of time to be ready for a family member in need, the kinship process in Massachusetts has specific rules that are different from standard foster care licensing.

What Is Kinship Care?

Kinship care means a child is placed with a relative or a person who has a significant, pre-existing relationship with the child (sometimes called a "fictive kin" placement — a close family friend, a neighbor who has known the child for years, or a godparent). Massachusetts law gives kinship placements explicit priority.

Under state law, DCF is required to first consider placement with a relative or close family connection before placing a child with an unrelated foster family. In practice, this means that when a 51A report leads to a removal, DCF's first calls are to relatives.

Emergency Kinship Placement: The First 48–72 Hours

When a child is removed from their home, DCF may contact you with little or no warning and ask if you can take the child immediately. This is the most stressful entry point into kinship care.

In an emergency, DCF can authorize a child to move in with you after a preliminary background check and a same-day or next-day safety visit. You do not need to be fully licensed yet. The child can be placed while you complete the licensing process in parallel.

If you are contacted for an emergency placement:

• You have the right to say yes without having your home study completed first
• DCF will send a worker for a rapid safety visit, usually within 24 hours
• A preliminary CORI check will be run on all adults in the household immediately
• You will then have 60 days to complete the full home study and MAPP training to obtain your license

The 60-day window is the kinship fast-track. It is shorter than the standard 4–9 month licensing timeline precisely because keeping a child with family is a legal priority.

CORI and Background Checks for Kinship Applicants

Kinship applicants go through the same CORI, SORI, FBI fingerprint, and DCF Central Registry checks as all other foster parent applicants. There is no waiver for relatives. A grandmother with a supported finding of neglect from 20 years ago will still go through the same discretionary review process.

What is different: in emergency kinship placements, DCF may run a preliminary CORI check to clear you for the immediate placement, with the full FBI fingerprint check (which takes two to four weeks) running concurrently while you have the child in your home.

Some kinship applicants — particularly grandparents who may have old or minor criminal records — worry about disclosure. The guidance is the same as for all applicants: disclose everything. The DCF discretionary review process exists to evaluate context, and omissions are treated as more serious than the underlying records.

Square Footage Waivers for Kinship Homes

Massachusetts physical home standards require a minimum of 50 square feet per child in a foster bedroom. For kinship placements, this minimum can be waived to 35 square feet per child when the reduction is necessary to preserve a family connection that would otherwise be severed by housing constraints.

The waiver is not automatic. It requires the Area Director's approval and documentation of why the standard cannot be met and why placement with this specific kin is in the child's best interest. If your home is smaller than the standard requires, discuss this with your DCF worker before assuming it is a disqualifier.

Stipend and Financial Support

Kinship foster parents receive the same daily stipend and clothing allowances as non-relative foster families, but only once they are licensed. In the period between emergency placement and licensure, you are caring for a child without any reimbursement from DCF.

Ask your DCF worker specifically about retroactive payment for the pre-licensure period. This is not a guaranteed benefit, but it is sometimes available depending on the circumstances and the individual area office. Raise the question early — once the licensing process is complete, going back to request retroactive payment is more complicated.

Once licensed, the daily stipends are:

• Ages 0–5: $34.12 per day
• Ages 6–12: $38.66 per day
• Ages 13+: $40.39 per day

The child in your care also receives MassHealth (Medicaid) coverage at no cost to you, as well as any other benefits they were receiving prior to placement.

MAPP Training for Kinship Caregivers

Yes, kinship caregivers are required to complete MAPP training. The 30-hour curriculum is the same. The difference is the timeline — you have 60 days from emergency placement to complete it, which means you may be attending MAPP training while already actively caring for the child.

Some area offices and private agencies have MAPP cohorts specifically designed for kinship caregivers, recognizing the time pressure. Ask your licensing worker immediately about the next available cohort when you are contacted for a placement.

Virtual MAPP training is widely available and may be the most practical option for kinship caregivers managing a sudden change in household responsibility.

Long-Term Options: Guardianship and Adoption

Kinship placements in Massachusetts can evolve into several long-term arrangements depending on the child's permanency plan:

Reunification: The birth parent completes DCF's service plan, and the child returns home. Your role as kin caregiver ends.

Long-term foster care: The child remains with you under an ongoing foster care license, typically when reunification is not feasible but adoption is also not the plan.

Guardianship: For older children (typically teens) or situations where severance from birth parents is not appropriate, the court may establish a legal guardianship with you as guardian. Guardianship ends DCF's involvement and gives you legal decision-making authority without formally terminating parental rights.

Kinship adoption: If parental rights are terminated, kinship families can adopt the child. DCF gives kinship caregivers priority consideration as adoptive families.

When You Are Asked on Short Notice

If DCF calls you today asking if you can take a child tonight, the most important things to know are:

1. You can say yes even without a completed home study
2. The preliminary safety visit and background check will happen quickly
3. You have 60 days to complete full licensing
4. Start asking about MAPP training schedules the same day

For a full breakdown of the kinship licensing pathway — including what the 60-day timeline looks like in practice, what happens if you cannot complete MAPP within 60 days, and how to handle the financial gap before licensure — the Massachusetts Foster Care Licensing Guide covers the kinship process in a dedicated section built around the realities of emergency placements.

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