天美麻豆

, 3% of U.S. children are in kinship care. This could be an aunt or uncle or other relative acting as guardian when the parents are unable to. On July 1, Virginia will become the last state to formally recognize kinship care. Thanks to the efforts of , among others, the state finally has a classification for kinship caregivers through which they are treated and paid like foster parents. Early Learning Nation spoke to Allison Gilbreath, the organization鈥檚 senior director of policy and programs, about the new law, which she has been working on for a decade.

Mark Swartz: What鈥檚 the immediate outcome of the new law?

Allison Gilbreath: It will allow for local departments of to come into a formal partnership with kinship families for children who would otherwise enter foster care. And now, the local agency will be able to offer them financial compensation that will be similar to what a foster parent would receive, which is around $800 in Virginia, depending on the child鈥檚 needs. And they will also be able to offer continual services that a typical foster family would receive. It also provides some opportunities for the family of origin to be on a path to reunification with the child.

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Swartz: What do you hope will happen in the long term?

Gilbreath: What I hope to see is that all localities start a true kin-first model, which is especially important for young children, because we know for the developing brain from 0 to 5, that attachment is extraordinarily important to their lifelong development.

Swartz: This has been a 10-year journey for you. Did you ever want to give up?

Gilbreath: Never, but the approach has been, 鈥淟et鈥檚 take bites of the apples over the course of years,鈥� to get here.

Swartz: For example?

Gilbreath: Virginia passed the program in 2018, which was for a small minority of children who were already placed with relatives. It allowed them to stay there and allowed the families to receive some compensation.

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Swartz: What kinds of objections did you hear to kinship care?

Gilbreath: Legislators would tell us, 鈥淲ell, that鈥檚 just what families should do. We shouldn鈥檛 be compensating them for what鈥檚 just the right thing.鈥� And we had to spend a lot of time educating them on, 鈥淒oing the right thing and taking on a child that has thousands of dollars of expenses annually aren鈥檛 the same thing.鈥�

Swartz: How would you describe the historical roots of the how kinship care was treated in Virginia?

Gilbreath: I think that there are systems of oppression that permeate every system of which we live in. Black children are disproportionately represented in our foster care system. And as a response, the foster care system has been built around white dominant culture. The majority of our foster parents in Virginia are white. It鈥檚 not because folks of color don鈥檛 want to be become foster parents. They鈥檙e doing this informal system of kinship care, and there hasn鈥檛 been support for what is inherently cultural to Black families.

Swartz: How does the system put obstacles in the way of would-be Black foster parents?

Gilbreath: In Virginia, we go far beyond the federal requirements to become a foster parent. The requirement that is probably most talked about is the drug offenses. Basically, if you were caught with a certain amount of marijuana 10 years ago, but you鈥檝e done nothing since then, you can鈥檛 be a foster parent in Virginia, and that disproportionately impacts families of color.

Swartz: So, a Black family in the first place might not be inclined to apply to be a foster family because of cultural issues, but then even if they were, there are these barriers preventing them.

Gilbreath: That鈥檚 very much the case.

Swartz: What about compensation for the attorneys? What we鈥檙e talking about is a legal process. A judge decides where a child goes, and if a family can鈥檛 afford their own representation, they鈥檙e going to have an attorney appointed by the state. But lawyers aren鈥檛 exactly lining up for that role, because the pay is so bad.

Gilbreath: The compensation for attorneys in child dependency cases is $120 for the entirety of the case, which is mind-boggling when I say it, but I always have to repeat. It鈥檚 the entirety of the case. So it鈥檚 almost always attorneys who are doing it as a part of their pro bono docket, which means two things happen. One, there鈥檚 poor representation. (This isn鈥檛 a matter of attorneys who don鈥檛 care, but the pay is low and the process can be traumatizing.) Two, because of the lack of adequate representation, those families are less likely to know all of their rights. They often have children removed who didn鈥檛 necessarily need to be removed in the first place.

Swartz: You鈥檙e a parent as well as an advocate, and you鈥檙e also a professor, teaching a course called Power, Privilege and Oppression in the . How do you weave all those strands together?

Gilbreath: has taught me extraordinary patience 鈥� for myself, for my children, for the sector, for the work. As a mom, you put in so much time, energy, into your children. And most days you don鈥檛 see any of the fruit of that. You might for one minute of a day, but then there are these glimmers where your child does something. For me, this year, my son started kindergarten, and he started to read. And seeing all the years that we put in from 0 to 5, just to try to build the building blocks for him to read, but that was five years of not just myself, but a lot of other people in his life through early intervention, through his teachers, to help us get there.

Swartz: And you get to see another kind of progress with your students.

Gilbreath: I鈥檝e been teaching this class for four years now, and it is really one of the coolest things to see a student who鈥檚 now in the sector, and is looking back and saying, Professor Gilbreath, 鈥淲hat you said in your class helped shape the trajectory of my career, or the way that I show up in this work.鈥� There are some things that I want to see changed in our system that perhaps I鈥檓 not going to see the change. I鈥檓 just going to lay the seed, and wait for the next person to fulfill the harvest.听

Swartz: Did you have a mentor or somebody who inspired you, along the way?

Gilbreath: One I would like to acknowledge is . She doesn鈥檛 do policy at all, actually, but that鈥檚 the way it goes. She鈥檚 an author. She was one of the first people to tell me I was special, which I don鈥檛 think people hear enough. I still talk to her all the time, when I鈥檓 faced with a hard decision or something like that. And she鈥檚 still supportive.

This story originally published on Early Learning Nation and is now archived on The 74. Learn more here.