Cuomo Signs Legislation to Expand KinGAP
Governor Cuomo signed legislation this week to expand, and improve, New York's Kinship Guardianship Assistance Program (KinGAP). The bill, which passed the State Senate and Assembly unanimously this summer, makes important amendments to the existing KinGAP policy, helping more of New York's children achieve permanency with fewer delays.
“This bill is an important step toward ensuring more children are able to leave foster care for stable, permanent homes with people who care for them," said Kari Siddiqui, senior policy analyst for the Schuyler Center.
The changes could lead to greater kinship care utilization throughout the state. "It's aligning KinGAP with our foster care system so that they can seamlessly work together," Siddiqui said.
The legislation makes the following changes to New York's KinGAP policy:
- Provides the KinGAP subsidy until age 21, regardless of when the KinGAP agreement was finalized;
- Previously, if KinGAP was implemented before a child turned 16, subsidies continued until the child turned 18. If the guardianship agreement was finalized after age 16, subsidies would continue until the child was 21. Often, this meant that a child remained in foster care until age 16 so that the guardianship would be extended. "They were delaying permanency, which isn’t good for children psychologically," Siddiqui said.
- Ensures half-siblings are treated as one sibling unit;
- Expands the definition of relative guardian to include adults who have an existing relationship with the child, including godparents or close family friends.
"Our kin caregivers who step up for their niece, grandson, sibling or for a former student make great personal sacrifices to do right by their family,” said Jess Dannhauser, president and CEO of Graham Windham, in a statement. "In doing right by kin caregivers, New York State is creating a safer, more stable and more prosperous place for children."
The legislation, introduced earlier this year by Senator Tony Avella and Assembly Member Andrew Hevesi, will have a lasting impact for the state's kin guardians.
"Hundreds of children will now leave the foster care system and live in permanent homes, exponentially increasing their chances for success and self-sufficiency," Hevesi said.
“I think these changes will enable us as a system to really do better by these families and help expedite permanency for them,” said Stephanie Gendell, executive director of the Citizens’ Committee for Children.
The changes will take effect 60 days after the approval of New York’s IV-E plan.
Next for advocates, including Schuyler Center and CCC, is pushing to change how KinGAP is funded in the state. They’d like to see it removed from the foster care block grant and instead funded separately, in the same way the state funds adoption subsidies. The block grant suffered $62 million in cuts this year, leaving counties in the state with less money to administer both foster care and KinGAP.
"One of the problems, aside from counties not having enough money, is that some of the counties aren’t using KinGAP as much as they otherwise would, because they want to preserve their foster care money for foster children," Gendell said. "And they’re worried that if they use KinGAP too often they won’t have enough money for the foster children, so that’s a really important change that we still need to advocate for."
Read the bill in full here.
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