Kinship Care in California: RFA Approval, Kin-GAP, and Guardianship

Kinship care in California is the arrangement that lets a grandparent, aunt, uncle, cousin, or close family friend raise a child whose parents can’t safely do so, and the state treats it as the preferred alternative to placing a child with strangers. What you get for taking on that role — money, health coverage, services, legal authority — depends almost entirely on whether the juvenile court is involved. Formal, court-ordered placements approved through the state’s Resource Family Approval process receive roughly $1,301 per month per child for the 2025–2026 fiscal year, while informal caregivers relying on CalWORKs as a non-needy caretaker relative receive about $1,039 per month for a single child.¹²

Informal or Formal: The Decision That Shapes Everything

Informal kinship care is a private family arrangement. You take the child in, no court order, no county child welfare agency, no dependency case. You can apply for CalWORKs cash aid as a non-needy caretaker relative, but the grant is smaller and wraparound services are limited.³

Formal kinship care means the county child welfare agency or the juvenile court has removed the child from the parents and placed the child with you. The child becomes a dependent of the court, you go through the state’s approval process, and that formal status is what unlocks the higher monthly payment, automatic Medi-Cal, and the fuller set of support services.

The path is not always a choice. If child welfare removed the child, formal is already in motion. If a parent asked you to take the child because they can’t cope right now, informal may be the only option on the table. But if child welfare offers to hand the child off to you through probate court instead of dependency court, understand what you may be giving up before agreeing — that decision is covered further down.

Who Counts as a Relative

California uses a broad definition. Under the Welfare and Institutions Code, a relative is any adult related to the child by blood, adoption, or affinity within the fifth degree of kinship: parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, great-aunts, great-uncles, first cousins, and their spouses, even after death or divorce.⁴

You don’t have to be blood-related. A “non-relative extended family member,” sometimes called fictive kin, is an adult with an established familial relationship to one of the child’s relatives, or a familial or mentoring relationship with the child.⁵ A godparent, a longtime family friend, or a coach who has been part of the child’s life can qualify. The county will verify the relationship.

Getting Approved: The Resource Family Approval Process

Every relative or non-relative extended family member who wants a formal, court-ordered placement goes through Resource Family Approval. RFA replaced the older, fragmented systems of relative approval, foster licensing, and guardianship/adoption approval with a single statewide standard.⁶

Training

You’ll complete a minimum of 12 hours of pre-approval caregiver training. Some counties add hours or require an orientation before training begins. The curriculum covers trauma and child development, positive discipline, the rights of children in foster care, working with birth parents, cultural competency, and the different permanency paths — reunification, adoption, and guardianship.⁷

Home Assessment and Interviews

The county runs a psychosocial assessment with multiple interviews and reviews your family’s ability to meet the specific child’s needs. A separate home environment check looks at physical safety: working smoke detectors, safe storage of firearms and medications, adequate sleeping arrangements.

Emergency Placements

When a child needs to be placed right away, you can take the child before full RFA approval is finished. The county first completes a home environment assessment and starts a criminal records check. From there, you have five business days to begin the RFA application, and Live Scan fingerprinting must be done within 10 days of placement. The full approval must be completed within 90 days.⁸ During this interim, you receive monthly payments at the basic foster care rate.

Background Checks

Every applicant and every adult in the home is screened through Live Scan fingerprinting for state and federal criminal records, the Child Abuse Central Index, the sex offender registry, and DMV records.⁸

Certain serious convictions listed in Health and Safety Code section 1522 — murder, sexual offenses against children, other violent felonies — are permanent, lifetime disqualifications with no exemption available.⁹

Other criminal history isn’t automatically disqualifying. If you have no misdemeanor conviction in the last five years, no felony conviction in the last seven years, and nothing on the permanent-bar list, the county can grant a simplified exemption without a formal request. For more recent or more serious convictions that aren’t on the permanent list, you can submit a formal exemption request and the county evaluates the circumstances case by case.⁹ A past record isn’t a reason to skip applying.

How Much You’ll Receive Each Month

What you get paid depends on the child’s legal status and which funding stream applies. The basic home-based family care rate for a resource family in 2025–2026 is $1,301 per month per child, with higher rates possible for children with higher needs under the Level of Care protocol.¹

Approved Relative Caregiver (ARC) Program

ARC pays the basic foster care rate to approved relatives caring for court-dependent children who don’t qualify for federal Title IV-E foster care funding. It’s a county-option program, though most California counties participate.¹⁰ Without ARC, these relatives would be limited to CalWORKs at roughly $1,039 per month for one child, about $260 less than the ARC rate.²

Kin-GAP: After the Dependency Case Ends

Kinship Guardianship Assistance Payments (Kin-GAP) provide ongoing monthly payments to a relative who becomes the child’s legal guardian after the juvenile court dependency case is dismissed. It’s a permanency option when reunification and adoption are both off the table. To qualify, the child must have lived in your approved home for at least six consecutive months while under juvenile court jurisdiction, and you must sign a written agreement with the county before the guardianship is established.¹¹

Kin-GAP payments generally run until the youth turns 18. If the guardianship began at age 16 or older, payments can continue up to age 21 for a youth attending high school or an equivalency program, enrolled in postsecondary or vocational school, employed at least 80 hours per month, in a program to remove barriers to employment, or unable to participate due to a documented condition. Youth with a documented physical or mental disability can continue receiving payments up to age 21 regardless of when the guardianship was established.¹²

CalWORKs for Informal Caregivers

If you’re caring for a relative’s child without court involvement, you can apply for CalWORKs as a non-needy caretaker relative. You don’t need legal guardianship or formal custody — you need to be related within the fifth degree of kinship and caring for a CalWORKs-eligible child.¹³ As a non-needy caretaker, you receive aid only for the child, not for yourself. The grant is lower than the foster care rate, but the process is much simpler.

Health Coverage for the Child

Children in formal kinship care who receive Title IV-E funding are automatically eligible for Medi-Cal, with no separate application and no annual redetermination. The same automatic eligibility applies to children receiving Title IV-E Kin-GAP payments after guardianship is established.¹⁴

For informal kinship care, there is no automatic enrollment, but the child usually still qualifies through standard income-based Medi-Cal, which covers children in households with income up to 266% of the federal poverty level. Apply through your county social services office or through Covered California.

Legal Custody: Probate Court or Dependency Court

California has two court paths for legal custody of a child in kinship care, and they lead to very different levels of support.

Probate Court Guardianship

A probate guardianship is a private legal action you file, usually when the parents agree, are incapacitated, or have disappeared. Filing fees run a few hundred dollars. If granted, you receive legal custody and decision-making authority. The catch: because the child is not a dependent of the juvenile court, probate guardians cannot access ARC funding, Kin-GAP, or the fuller set of child welfare support services.¹⁵ Child welfare agencies sometimes steer relatives toward probate when a willing caregiver is available, and families can end up cut off from more robust financial support without realizing it.

Juvenile Dependency Guardianship

This route happens after the county has removed the child and the juvenile court has found the child to be a dependent due to abuse or neglect. Once the court establishes a legal guardianship with you, the dependency case is typically dismissed. This is the required legal pathway for Kin-GAP.¹¹ You receive full legal and physical custody and continue the monthly Kin-GAP payment as long as the child remains eligible.

When the Two Overlap

If a dependency petition is filed while a probate guardianship case is still pending, the juvenile court takes priority and probate loses jurisdiction over custody. AB 260, enacted in 2021, requires that parties in probate guardianship cases be informed about resources available through the dependency system, so the court should explain your options.¹⁶

Other Benefits Worth Checking

Federal Tax Credits

Kinship caregivers who meet the IRS dependency and residency tests can claim significant tax credits, whether the arrangement is formal or informal.

The Child Tax Credit is worth up to $2,200 per qualifying child under 17 who lives with you more than half the year and is claimed as your dependent. The IRS relationship test covers grandchildren, nieces, nephews, siblings, stepchildren, and eligible foster children. Full credit applies at income up to $200,000 ($400,000 for joint filers). If your federal tax liability is low, you may qualify for the refundable Additional Child Tax Credit of up to $1,700 per child with at least $2,500 in earned income.¹⁷

The Earned Income Tax Credit can also apply. The child must meet the same relationship test (grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and agency- or court-placed foster children all count), live with you in the U.S. more than half the year, and be under 19 (or under 24 if a full-time student). Where no parent can claim the child, the person with the highest adjusted gross income gets priority.¹⁸ The EITC is fully refundable and can be worth several thousand dollars.

Social Security and SSI

A child in your care may qualify for Social Security survivors benefits if a parent has died and worked long enough to be covered. The child must be unmarried and under 18, or up to 19 if still in full-time elementary or secondary school. A child with a disability that began before age 22 can qualify at any age, and grandchildren can qualify under certain circumstances.¹⁹

For SSI, a child with a qualifying disability can receive benefits in 2026 if countable resources stay under $2,000. Interaction with foster care payments matters: state or local needs-based foster payments are generally excluded from income for SSI, while Title IV-E foster care payments are counted based on need.²⁰ Talk to your county worker before assuming you can collect both benefits at their full amounts.

Education Rights and Enrollment

Children in formal kinship care have strong educational protections under California’s AB 490, which requires districts to accept coursework and partial credits from a previous school, facilitate proper enrollment when a child transfers, and move records quickly. Districts with foster children services programs designate an educational liaison who helps with placement, enrollment, and credit transfers.²¹

Children who change living situations because of economic hardship may also qualify for protections under the federal McKinney-Vento Act: the right to remain in the school of origin, immediate enrollment even without immunization records or proof of residency, and continued enrollment while any dispute over eligibility is resolved.²² If a school tries to delay enrollment because you don’t have records, the law is clear: enroll first, get records later.

Kinship Support Services Program

California’s Kinship Support Services Program (KSSP) provides non-financial help through participating counties. Available services vary but can include case management, respite care, support groups, counseling, tutoring and educational advocacy, family recreation activities, guardianship clinics, and referrals to community resources.²³ Respite care in particular matters because caregiver burnout is a leading reason kinship placements break down. Contact your county’s kinship support services coordinator to see what’s actually on offer where you live.

If the Child Is a Tribal Member

If the child is a member of or eligible for membership in a federally recognized Indian tribe, the federal Indian Child Welfare Act sets separate placement preferences that override the general rules. For foster or pre-adoptive placements, the order is: a member of the child’s extended family first, then a foster home approved by the child’s tribe, then a licensed Indian foster home, then a tribal-approved institution. The child’s tribe can modify the order by resolution, and placements must be in the least restrictive setting that approximates a family and meets the child’s needs.²⁴ Where ICWA applies, the county must follow these federal preferences before considering other options.

1
California Alliance of Caregivers. ACL 25-45 Foster Care Rates 2025-26
2
DPSS LA County. CalWORKs Fact Sheet and Maximum Payment Standards
3
Department of Social Services. Kinship Care
4
California Legislative Information. California Welfare and Institutions Code 11400
5
California Legislative Information. California Welfare and Institutions Code 362.7
6
California Department of Social Services. Resource Family Approval Program
7
California Courts. Resource Family Approval Guide
8
Advokids. Resource Family Approval (RFA) Program
9
California Department of Social Services. Resource Family Approval Written Directives
10
California Department of Social Services. Approved Relative Care
11
California Department of Social Services. Kinship Guardianship Assistance
12
Santa Clara County SSA. Extension of Adoption Assistance Program and Kinship Guardianship Assistance
13
My DPSS – LA County. Caretaker Relative Requirements
14
Department of Health Care Services. Minor Dependents in the Foster Care, Kinship Guardianship Assistance Payment Programs
15
California Courts. Crossover Issues Between Probate, Dependency and Delinquency Courts
16
Alliance for Children’s Rights. Navigating Probate and Dependency Courts Under AB 260
17
Internal Revenue Service. Child Tax Credit
18
Internal Revenue Service. Qualifying Child Rules
19
Social Security Administration. Benefits for Children
20
Social Security Administration. Foster Care Payments
21
California Legislature. AB 490 Assembly Bill – Chaptered
22
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC Chapter 119 Subchapter VI Part B – Education for Homeless Children and Youths
23
California Department of Social Services. Kinship Support Services Program
24
Native American Rights Fund. FAQ 16 Placement – A Practical Guide to the Indian Child Welfare Act