Kinship. Family is Key to providing safety, stability to children
PIERRE – Family connections are critical to healthy child development and a sense of belonging. When children must be removed from their families for safety, kinship care is the preferred placement.
Kinship care is an arrangement in which children live with and are cared for by a family member or people who have an emotionally significant relationship with the child.
What is Kinship? It is a blood relationship.
“Family is key to providing safety and stability to children,” said DSS Cabinet Secretary Laurie Gill. “This can be especially true when a family is in crisis. Having the children cared for by other family members or loved ones helps minimize the trauma for everyone.”
Family connections are so important that earlier this month, Governor Kristi Noem proclaimed September 2021 as Kinship Appreciation and Awareness Month in South Dakota.
Kinship care improves children’s well-being, preserves sibling ties, promotes permanency, and helps preserve the child’s identity as well as family and cultural traditions.
“Kinship care is important because of the fact that all children gravitate back to where they came from; they want that,” said LaCosta McGhee, a South Dakota foster parent and a member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe. “But most importantly they NEED that connection.”
Click here for more on Kinship and Foster care at news.sd.gov
