Extended Family Care

Significant numbers of Washington, DC’s children depend on their grandparents, aunts, uncles, godparents and other extended family members to take care of their most important needs. More than 10,000 children in Washington, DC are raised entirely by extended family members. Thousands more live with a parent and an extended family member, and extended family members are primary caretakers for many of these children.

Informal Extended Family Care
Many extended family members raise children without any formal arrangement with the children’s parents or the legal system. In many cases, there is no need for formal arrangements. Extended family members who are raising children can seek public benefits, enroll the children in public school and obtain many services on children’s behalf without any court involvement and can work with the children’s parents to obtain their consent for any services that only the parent can authorize.

Custodial Power of Attorney
DC law allows parents to give another adult the legal authority to make important decisions for their children. Parents can draft a legal paper called a “custodial power of attorney” which can be revoked at any time.

Custodial powers of attorney help extended family members who are taking care of children obtain medical care and other services that would otherwise require the parent’s consent or legal custody. Unlike legal custody, custodial powers of attorney do not require extended family members to go to court; parents can write and sign custodial powers of attorney at any time.

Legal Custody
Extended family members can seek legal custody under Washington, DC’s third party custody statute. Extended family members can go to court to file a “complaint for custody.” To win custody, they must:

1) Overcome by clear and convincing evidence the presumption that living with a parent serves a child’s best interests, and
2) Prove that custody with them will serve the child’s best interests.

Legal custody gives extended family members the authority to make important decisions for children and provides legal stability for children. Parents retain the right to visit the child.

Foster Care 
Sometimes children are placed with extended family members after the government suspects that they are being abused or neglected by their parents. Research shows a host of benefits from foster children living with extended family:

• Four times less likely to be bounced to another home;
• Less likely to have behavioral problems.
• More likely to move quickly to a legally permanent home;
• Less likely to be abused or neglected;
• More likely to stay with brothers and sisters.

Federal law recognizes this benefit by requiring the government to search for extended family members before placing children in foster care with strangers.

Children in the abuse and neglect system live with extended family members in one of two ways. Most frequently, extended family members become licensed foster parents and the Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) places the child in their home. When this happens, the extended family member can receive a foster care subsidy from CFSA to help take care of the child, but the child is in CFSA’s legal custody and CFSA has more authority over the child and family.

Alternatively, DC law allows Family Court judges to place children directly in the custody of extended family members. When that happens, extended family members do not receive a subsidy from CFSA but the child is not in CFSA’s custody and the extended family members do not have to comply with CFSA’s licensing requirements.

Adoption and Guardianship 
When foster children cannot return to their parents, extended family members can form legally permanent bonds with foster children through adoption or guardianship. Adoption makes the extended family member the child’s legal parent with all the same rights and responsibilities of biological parents and terminates the biological parents’ rights to the child. Guardianship is more like legal custody and gives extended family members the power to make most important decisions for children, but does not terminate all of the parents’ rights and allows parents the continuing right to visit the child.

Financial Support for Extended Family Members Raising Children
Public benefits
Extended family members who raise children have the same access to public benefits as parents. They can seek TANF and food stamps on behalf of children in their care, and they can seek to be the “representative payee” for a child’s SSI or other Social Security benefits.

Grandparent Caregiver Program
DC has a unique program to help low-income grandparents, great-grandparents and great aunts and uncles take care of children. The Grandparent Caregiver Program provides these relatives with a financial subsidy equivalent to the payment they would receive if the children were in foster care.

Eligible families can call CFSA at 202-442-6100 and ask for the Grandparent Caregivers Program staff.

Foster Care, Adoption and Guardianship 
When extended family members step in for a parent to raise a child, they often need financial assistance. Assistance to extended families helps them become more stable and helps children in their care thrive. When a child is in foster care, the extended family members can become licensed foster parents and receive foster care payments.  In addition both permanent guardians and adoptive parents can seek subsidies to help take care of the child once the Family Court case closes.