Kinship Family Relatedness,Nuclear Family Contact,and Social Support Among Foster Youth

Using a sample of 16-year-old youth placed with kinship foster families in California, the current study examines the relationship between kinship foster family structure and foster youth's biological family contact and support. Latent class analysis was used to examine differences in family structure based on the relatedness between foster youth and other members of the kinship family household. Subsequently, the respective relationships among household structure and foster youths' characteristics, experiences, and biological family contact and support were examined. We find that the kinship families serving foster youth are represented by four distinct household types, including sibling and grandparent households. Kinship family household type is found to be statistically significantly associated with youths' contact with siblings, closeness to caregivers, and perceived social support. Implications for kinship foster family scholarship are discussed.