About 2.5 million children across the United States are being raised in grandfamilies,1 families in which grandparents, other adult relatives, or close family friends are raising children with no parents in the home. These are also known as kinship families, and we use these terms interchangeably in this report. When children cannot remain in the care of their parents, research consistently shows that they do best in kinship/grandfamilies.2 Indeed, studies confirm that children in kinship/grandfamily care experience better academic outcomes than those in non-kin foster care.
Even though children thrive in kinship/ grandfamilies, they often face serious challenges that can affect their educational success and are not easily overcome without appropriate, equitable services and support. Kinship/grandfamily challenges that impact education include:
- Meeting basic needs, which is critical for children to be able to learn, including attaining financial security, accessing healthcare and mental health services, obtaining safe and affordable housing, securing transportation, and maintaining healthy and adequate nutrition.
- Enrolling children in school when kin/ grandfamily caregivers do not have a legal relationship giving them authority to do so. This may also make it difficult to manage day-to-day education decisions for the children they are raising.
- Overcoming communication barriers with schools, which can result in missing essential notifications from the school and being excluded from education planning, such as the creation of individualized education plans (IEPs) and 504 plans for the children.
- Obtaining support for learning differences and other special needs, which are more common among children in kinship/grandfamilies than the general population and can lead to academic challenges without appropriate support.
- Managing the short- and long-term effects of trauma, which most children in kinship/grandfamilies experience before living with kin.10 These experiences can significantly impact their ability to learn.
Schools can serve as hubs of support for kinship/grandfamilies by providing wraparound services to connect them to needed benefits and supports. However, schools often lack staff trained on the unique strengths and needs of kinship/grandfamilies and/or do not have the resources, such as social workers and counselors, to provide the additional support necessary for the children’s educational success.