
Child Trends, in partnership with Wayfinder Family Services, conducted a 3-year evaluation of the Kinnections Kinship Support & Navigation Program to investigate whether kinship caregiver well-being, access to services, referrals to services, satisfaction with programs and services, and their kinship children’s placement stability improved as a result of receiving services from a Kinnections kinship navigator. Beginning in June 2022, we surveyed kinship caregivers when they first requested services (treatment) or when they first heard about the study (comparison) and then again four months later (both groups).
As of July 2024, a total of 302 kinship caregivers had been enrolled in the five treatment counties and received Kinnections services, and 254 kinship caregivers had been enrolled in the eight comparison counties and received services as usual in their counties. We concluded enrollment into the study and continued collecting 4-month follow-up surveys through the end of January 2025. We then began the analysis phase and prepared to submit our final report on findings in September 2025.
Kinship navigator programs offered information, referrals, education, and linkages to vital resources and supports for grandparents and other relatives raising children. These programs have been found to support positive outcomes in safety, permanency, and stability for children in the care of their relative(s), and there remained a continued need for evidence-based research for these programs.
Wayfinder Family Services was the sole national awardee to demonstrate an evidence-based model of kinship navigation programming through funding by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Administration for Children & Families, Family Connection Grants: Building the Evidence for Kinship Navigator Programs. This project was a multi-agency partnership with five counties where Lilliput provided kinship navigation programs—Butte, Placer, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, and Sonoma—and was supported by the State of California Department of Health & Human Services. Child Trends, a nonprofit research organization that provides science-based information to improve the decisions, programs, and policies that affect children and their families, led the evaluation to measure outcomes of well-being, access to services, referrals to services, and overall client satisfaction across the five participating counties and to compare results with kinship caregivers not served by Wayfinder’s kinship program.
This website was supported by Grant Number 90CF0055 from the ACF/ACYF/CB – Central Program Office within the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Neither the Administration for Children and Families nor any of its components operated, controlled, were responsible for, or necessarily endorsed this website (including, without limitation, its content, technical infrastructure, and policies, and any services or tools provided). The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed were those of the author(s) and did not necessarily reflect the views of the Administration for Children and Families and the ACF/ACYF/CB – Central Program Office.
Child Trends, with Wayfinder Family Services, conducted a study to learn more about experiences with kinship caregiving.
By participating in this study, respondents helped demonstrate the importance of kinship care and the supports and services needed to keep children with their families.
The goals of the study were to support the implementation and evaluation of a well-established, existing kinship navigator program, contribute to the research reviewed by the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse, and create a pathway for funding for states and counties to ensure kin caregivers and their families received the support they needed.
If you had any questions about the study, you could contact Jasmine Nutt at jnutt@wayfinderfamily.org.