In 2014, there were over 12,000 children who spent some time in out-of-home care in Minnesota, with a majority in family foster care. While most children in foster care return home, for others, reunification is not an option. As the agency policy specialist for the Permanency Unit of the Child Safety and Permanency Division at the Minnesota Department of Human Services, I provide guidance and technical assistance on permanency policy implementation to DHS staff and partners. In my role, I look at not only adoption as an option for youth who cannot be safely or timely reunified, but also transfer of permanent legal and physical custody to a relative, recognizing that adoption may not always be the best permanency option.

While the custody option is not new, the benefit program associated with it, called Northstar Kinship Assistance, is. What follows is an overview of Northstar Care for Children and one of its three components, Northstar Kinship Assistance.

Northstar Care for Children

The Minnesota Legislature passed Northstar Care for Children in 2013 to address the disparity in benefit levels across foster care, adoption, and relative custody assistance. Prior to Northstar Care for Children, foster parents tended to receive much higher payments than adoptive parents or relative custodians. Additionally, the benefit program for relative custodians, Relative Custody Assistance, was complicated to apply for, maintain eligibility for and administer. It was basically cobbled together using existing Minnesota Family Investment Program funds, Medical Assistance and state funds that were not 100 percent guaranteed. And although Adoption Assistance was more streamlined and widely known, the benefit amount was significantly less than the foster care benefit.

Department staff and partners shared a concern that this disparity in benefits was negatively impacting permanency outcomes for children and youth in foster care, contributing to prolonged stays in foster care and youth aging out of care without a permanent family, both of which carry a high risk of adverse outcomes, including homelessness, interaction with the criminal justice system and economic hardship.

Northstar Care for Children equalizes benefits across the three programs for children ages 6 and up*, thereby reducing the possibility that children’s permanency options are based upon competing financial incentives. The department also took the opportunity to develop a new uniform assessment tool for determining supplemental foster care payments. Where the former Difficulty of Care assessment was based on the existence of difficult or challenging behaviors in children, the new Minnesota Assessment of Parenting for Children and Youth shifts the focus to what is needed to meet the needs of children in care. Supplemental payments are therefore based on the strengths and needs of children and what caregivers are doing to meet those needs.

*Children ages 5 and under receive the pre-school entry rate for Northstar Adoption Assistance and Northstar Kinship Assistance. The pre-school entry rate is half of what these children would have received while in foster care.

Northstar Kinship Assistance

Northstar Kinship Assistance is the component of Northstar Care for Children that provides benefits to children whose relatives accepted a permanent transfer of legal and physical custody for them. Relatives are individuals related by blood, marriage or adoption; legal parents (including adoptive parents), guardians, or custodians of children’s siblings; or individuals with whom children have resided or had significant contact. Benefits include financial support and, in most cases, Medical Assistance/Medicaid.

Northstar Kinship Assistance replaced Relative Custody Assistance on January 1, 2015, when the department launched Northstar Care for Children. Where the Relative Custody Assistance payment was contingent on availability of state funds, Northstar Care for Children is a forecasted program, meaning that state funding for payments to relative custodians (and adoptive and foster) will always be factored into the state budget by the Minnesota Legislature.

While there are many differences between Relative Custody Assistance and Northstar Kinship Assistance (including the benefit level), one of the biggest differences is that Northstar Kinship Assistance does not require children to meet special needs criteria, nor does family gross income play any role in determining eligibility. Instead, a child whose permanency plan is a transfer of permanent legal and physical custody to a relative, and the child’s prospective relative custodian, must meet the following to be eligible for Northstar Kinship Assistance:

  • Citizenship and immigration requirements for the child (or the prospective relative custodian, if the child does not meet these requirements)
  • Background study requirements for the prospective relative custodian
  • Living arrangements; specifically, the child must have lived with the prospective relative custodian, while the prospective relative custodian was licensed to provide child foster care, for six consecutive months (unless given an exemption)
    • As long as the child has resided in the prospective relative custodian’s home (while licensed, of course) for at least one day of the month, that counts as a whole month. So, if a child moved in with the licensed prospective relative custodian on May 30, the six consecutive months are up October 1.
    • Exemptions are granted very rarely. An exemption means that no federal Title IV-E funds can be used to make payments to families; rather, only local and state funds can be used, which can have an impact on local agencies’ budgets. It also means that children are not automatically eligible for Medical Assistance/Medicaid, and they must apply for and qualify on their own.

Additional criteria are:

  • The child was initially removed from the child’s home via court order or voluntary placement agreement.
  • There is a judicial determination that a transfer of permanent legal and physical custody to a relative is in the child’s best interest.
  • There are agency determinations that 1) reunification and adoption are not appropriate permanency options for the child, and 2) the child has a strong attachment to the prospective relative custodian, and the prospective relative custodian is committed to caring permanently for the child.
  • The child was consulted, if age 14 or older at the time of the finalized court order.
  • The Northstar Kinship Assistance benefit agreement was signed by all parties (including the Minnesota Department of Human Services) prior to a finalized court order permanently transferring legal and physical custody to the prospective relative custodian.

That last bullet is a key point of eligibility. It is very important to have everything completed and signed by not just the prospective relative custodian and the local agency, but also the Minnesota Department of Human Services, before finalizing the court order permanently transferring custody, or the family will not be eligible for Northstar Kinship Assistance.

Of course, prospective relative custodians have the option of declining Northstar Kinship Assistance benefits. I’d like to stress that Northstar Kinship Assistance is considered a benefit for children. Even if the funds are not needed right now, they can be set aside and saved for when children leave home as adults. Before signing a statement to decline benefits, it is important to talk with prospective relative custodians about what Northstar Kinship Assistance entails so they can make an informed decision.

Resources and More Information

Because Northstar Kinship Assistance is so new, and its eligibility and procedural requirements differ quite a bit from the previous Relative Custody Assistance program, we expect that there will be bumps along the way during the first few years of implementation. To help with implementation, we have several resources available.

For more information on Northstar Care for Children generally, visit the Northstar Care for Children webpage on CountyLink. You can also view the Northstar Care for Children Practice Guide and Paths to Permanency. The practice guide is mainly for county and tribal staff, as it provides an overview of procedure and practice in implementing Northstar Care for Children. Paths to Permanency provides an overview of legal issues and financial supports, and includes a comparison of adoption and transfer of custody. For more information on the new uniform assessment tool, visit the Minnesota Assessment of Parenting for Children and Youth webpage on CountyLink.

Because this is a policy blog, here are the statutory references to the programs and policies outlined in this post:

For more information on Northstar Kinship Assistance, Relative Custody Assistance, and the permanency option of transfer of permanent legal and physical custody to a relative, contact me, Heidi Ombisa Skallet, at [email protected].

Heidi Ombisa Skallet, MSW, LISW, is the adoption and kinship policy specialist at the Minnesota Department of Human Services.