Youth Law Center advocates that child welfare and juvenile justice systems prioritize placing children and youth with their families whenever possible. We believe that maintaining family and community connections is essential to the well-being, healing, and long-term success of young people. Placing children with relatives-rather than in institutional settings, and ensuring those relatives are supported- provides stability, preserves cultural identity, and strengthens lifelong relationships.
Our work advances a kin-first culture by addressing the practice, policy, and cultural barriers that prevent children from being placed with family. We support reforms that ensure relatives are not only considered first for placement, but also receive the full rights, resources, and support they need to care for children successfully. This includes access to financial benefits, health care, legal assistance, ability to make decisions and work as a partner, and trauma-informed services.
Through policy advocacy, training, technical assistance, and the development of resource materials, we work with child welfare and probation systems to improve how they identify, engage, and support kin caregivers. Our advocacy pushes for support, partnership, equitable access to benefits for kin, and ensuring that no family is denied the ability to care for their child due to bureaucratic or financial obstacles.
By centering family relationships, we are building systems that are more just, more humane, and more responsive to the needs of children and the communities they call home.