Kinship Care of Children with Incarcerated Parents

In 2007, approximately 77,200 fathers and 65,600 mothers were imprisoned in the United States (Judicial Statistics Bureau, 2007). As our society continues to grow, our prison and prison population is on the rise. If a parent or guardian is arrested, the boy (child) will be taken away and released for relatives or children's protection services. Children are given to close families or parents who represent them. And that means foster parents. This has an emotional influence on the boys involved, which may cause them to conduct illegal activities.

There are many reasons why parents do not want to take care of children or can not. It includes death, imprisonment, illness, substance abuse and financial instability. After taking away the child from the biologist, many relatives' children are placed under the Child Protection Service (CPS). This may also happen in a family court without CPS participation. When the CPS takes away children, the local Children's Services Department seeks relative placement before putting the child into non-relative foster care. Most relatives and children experienced some form of trauma that caused alienation of their natural family. Relatives are victims of abuse and exhibit signs of posttraumatic stress disorder, special needs and disorders due to drug abuse in the uterus, counseling and other support services, or professional social education services

There are four different types of relative care. Informal family care, temporary custody, voluntary relative care, and formal family care. The first category is informal family care, which means that arrangements for children's living are created by parents and other families without the help of courts and child welfare agencies. As an example of such care, relatives such as grandparents, aunts, uncle, etc. may take care of their children until their parents recover if their parents are sick and they can not care for their children. The second type of care is temporary custody. This type is when my parents are temporarily planning to deposit their children with relatives. In this type you need to consult a lawyer who will submit the document to the court for approval by the judge. The third care for relatives is voluntary relative care. The fourth kind of concern is the official relative worry

When a mother is imprisoned, the child is usually taken care of grandparents and other relatives. But most fathers say their children are being taken care of by other children's parents. About 2 percent of fathers and 10 percent of mothers say they have foster parents. This number seems to be higher, as many imprisoned parents do not have the latest information about children, or they do not consider the state-sponsored relatives as a form of foster parent. Before they entered school, 46% of imprisoned parents lived with their minor children. Prior to imprisonment, most mothers and nearly half of their fathers lived in the same house as their children. Overall, only 20% of the father and 12% of the mother living with the child or spouse before being imprisoned. However, many parents report to keep in touch with their children even if they do not live with their children.