The day Victoria Woody got the phone call started out like any other in March 2024. She was at home working and preparing for a business trip, while her 9-year-old son was at school. Then the caller ID lit up — an investigator with the Connecticut Department of Children and Families was on the line with an extraordinary question: Was Woody willing to take in her sister’s five children that very day?
“I didn’t hesitate to say yes,” Woody said. “It was more, ‘Oh my God, it’s the middle of the workday!’”
She ended her workday early and made a quick assessment of her home. Breakable objects were closed up in a box and placed in the laundry room. She emptied her spare bedroom and made note of what she needed: a mattress for one of the older kids and cribs for the three youngest, whom she called the “littles,” an almost 2-year-old girl, and 9-month-old twins.
She’d need clothes, diapers, bedding, bottles, formula, food — much of which came flooding in within days with help from DCF and friends. Woody also had to undergo a background check by DCF right away, and then, in the coming months, complete a licensing process to care for the children.
It also took Woody some time to absorb the enormity of what she was about to take on. “It’s just me! It’s me up against six kids,” she remembered thinking.
The decision to move the kids in with Woody is referred to as a “kinship” placement in DCF parlance. In these placements, children live with relatives or “fictive kin” — meaning a close family connection like a coach, neighbor or teacher.
In 2019, Connecticut set a goal to increase its rate of kinship care placements to 70%, an aspirational figure set by former commissioner Vanessa Dorantes. That goal, which has no specified timeframe, was intended to build on progress the agency has made since 2010 to grow its kinship placement rate. The effort is based on extensive research showing that kinship placements often have positive effects in the long term, from improvements in a child’s mental health to better school attendance.
Feds want improvement plan for CT DCF. State not in ‘substantial conformity’ in some areas
“We fundamentally believe that children should reside safely at home with their parents, and when that is not possible, due to an unresolved safety factor, we want to do everything we can to keep that child within the familial system or with people that have a familial relationship with them,” said Ken Mysogland, DCF’s chief administrator of external affairs and a former director of foster care at the agency.
For Woody, keeping the children together was critical. From the moment she got the call, it was clear in her mind that the children had to remain united under her roof, despite the fact that she hadn’t seen the older kids in years, and she’d never met the three younger ones.
The oldest child, age 15, has Type 1 diabetes. The toddler was frightened and had trouble sleeping. The kids had been through a lot, and had moved from homes to shelters. At one point, they’d slept in a storage unit.
“I knew that, no matter what, they needed to see that family is important and that at the end of the day, you have each other,” she said.
In 2010, only 17% of DCF placements were with kin in Connecticut. The vast majority went instead to licensed foster families or to congregate care.
Today, out of 1,900 licensed caregivers, 850 are kinship families, and 47.5% of children placed by the agency are in kinship care.
Some states like Rhode Island have already surpassed Connecticut’s goal, with around 73% of children in kinship placements. But Connecticut is still toward the front of the pack nationwide, exceeding the national average of 39%. It ranks ahead of neighboring Massachusetts which has a 39% rate of kinship placement and much further ahead of states like Virginia, where only 17% of kids in foster care are living with kin.
Mysogland said that the COVID-19 pandemic complicated the agency’s ability to meet its 70% target because of “an increase in the acuity of behavioral health needs of children, higher costs of living, community unrest, the opioid crisis, and other pressures that directly impact a family’s ability to care for their own children, leaving them with less ability to care for others’ [children].”
At the same time, the agency is making progress on another one of its goals: reducing the number of children in DCF care. That number has gone from 3,740 in December 2019 to 2,953 in December 2025.
“We’re very proud of the fact that we have supports to keep children at home and prevent removal,” Mysogland said.
But DCF’s emphasis on kinship care is not without its critics, who say they’re concerned that the favor DCF shows to kinship placements can result in placements with families that are not prepared to take on a child with complex needs, or result in a child being moved in some cases.
Road to kinship care
Getting to the nearly 50% rate has been a layered process, one that reflects changing attitudes and tactics within an agency trying to account for evolving national trends.
Fifteen years ago, the 17% kinship care rate at DCF was low, but on par with rates across the country. That year, according to Mysogland, DCF Commissioner Susan Hamilton launched an effort to place more children with kin before her first tenure as commissioner ended. Hamilton recently took over the helm of the department once again, serving as acting commissioner following the departure of Jodi Hill-Lilly in September.
The issue saw significant investment under the direction of Joette Katz, who took over as commissioner in 2011, at a moment when the agency was under fire for failures to recruit foster parents and an overreliance on congregate care in wake of a lawsuit against the agency.
Katz, who left her post as a justice on Connecticut’s Supreme Court to become commissioner under Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, had previously worked as a juvenile judge. But that didn’t prepare her for the complexities of DCF’s inner workings.
“What I learned is that children were not being placed with kin,” Katz said. “Many children were being sent out of state, and far too many were being placed in congregate care.”
Katz said that while those institutions weren’t poorly run, their employees worked multiple shifts, so the caretakers that children saw changed throughout the day.
“My theory was, for starters, children should have breakfast in the morning with the same person who put them to bed the night before. That’s how I raised my children and that’s how all children deserve to be raised,” Katz said.
The push to place foster youth with kin is supported by a large body of research. Generations United, a nonprofit that promotes family placements, points to research supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development over the past two decades, as well as analysis of state level data. The findings were persuasive: Children in kinship placements tend to maintain more relationships because they often remain in the same communities and schools, living with people who share the same racial and cultural identity. Children in kinship care also have a lower likelihood of behavioral problems and mental health challenges.
The picture isn’t entirely rosy — some research has found that children in kinship care have lower rates of adoption and reunification, for example. But children in kinship care have also seen improved educational outcomes, including better attendance and lower rates of discipline. Relatives often live in the same communities so kids in kinship care are more likely to stay put in the same school district.
But some of the reasons for the better outcomes among children in kinship care are more subjective, and difficult to prove. For example, researchers theorize that being placed with kin may make the process of removal from birth parents less traumatic for some children, leading to fewer behavioral issues. Or, kinship caregivers may feel more personally involved and connected with a child than a typical foster parent, meaning a relative who already knows a child may be less likely to end a placement out of a sense of personal responsibility and loyalty.
“What we know from national statistics is that children who are placed into kinship care do better, physically, emotionally, psychologically, educationally as compared to kids in other placements, because of the comfort that they feel living with those individuals with whom they’re already familiar,” Mysogland said.
DCF is leaning into that success. Advocates say it’s a course correction after an era in which the agency didn’t put much effort into placing kids with family.
“I’ve seen (commissioners) come and go and have seen the pendulum swing back and forth” between reunification of families and taking kids away, said Martha Stone, founder of the Center for Children’s Advocacy in Connecticut, which brought the landmark “Juan F.” class action lawsuit. The case, filed in 1989, found the agency was poorly resourced and guided by outdated policies and resulted in the department being placed under federal oversight until 2022.
The swings toward removal, Stone said, come in response to egregious child deaths in the news. Katz came into office at a time when the pendulum was headed back toward family unification, and at a time when a national push was being made by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and others to emphasize kinship placements.
“There’s been a mixed reaction to that, both in Connecticut and nationally,” Stone said. “The good part is that more kids are with family. But the difficulties are that sometimes the families are not equipped to handle some of the kids, and the resources given to families are not intensive enough for families to be able to parent the kids.”
According to Katz, 40% of children were in congregate settings when she began at the agency. By the time she left, that had fallen to 6%.
While a federal law in 1996 dictated that relatives had to be given preference when children were placed, that rule was ineffective for many families who, like Woody, were not previously licensed to be foster parents.
Before her tenure, Katz said she heard that DCF had at one point been ordered to remove scores of kids from foster homes after an incident in which a child was injured. Katz said DCF employees from that era tended to believe that it was safer to place a child in an institution rather than in a foster home. “Well, we can’t have DCF in your house 24/7,” the thinking went. So, if a concern was raised about a child’s welfare, the safest thing to do was to swiftly take them out of the home.
To Katz, it was clear that removal was traumatic. “Really, children don’t have to always be removed to be safe.” Even children with needs, like psychiatric care, could be helped in the home rather than being removed.
When children did need to be removed, it was common sense to Katz that they should go with kin whenever possible.
“It’s very traumatic for children who are having any experience with the system,” Katz said. To minimize the trauma, she said it made sense to place them with people they knew. “At least let them be with somebody — grandma, grandpa, somebody else who is part of their network and not a total stranger. And it was just that basic.”
Mysogland said the shift to emphasize kinship placements concerned some foster families.
“At the time, there was some uneasiness in the foster care community because foster parents felt like they were now not as important as kin,” Mysogland said. But, Mysogland said, foster families are a critical resource and DCF needs new foster families, since there are many situations in which a child cannot be placed with kin.
Dr. Tyreasa Washington, a social worker and scholar who studies the impact of kinship care on children and caregivers and teaches at Harvard Medical School, said the increased number of children in kinship care, in Connecticut and other states, is largely an acknowledgement of a robust body of research that indicates children placed with kin have the best outcomes.
“Being able to maintain cultural ties with siblings, aunts and uncles, and have a connection with their birth parents, is better,” Washington said. “New research also says that there’s less of a chance for children to be reabused when they’re placed with kin.”
Claire Kimberly, a senior policy analyst on child welfare at the policy research nonprofit Chapin Hall, said that federal policy moves over the past two decades have incrementally created more support for family unification and kinship care, and states like Connecticut acted accordingly. “There’s been research supporting it, and our policy makers are getting that research, realizing that kinship care is better overall, and then creating new policies based on that,” she said.
By the time Katz left DCF in 2019, more than 40% of children were in kinship placements.
Overcoming Challenges
Today, that number sits still higher, at nearly 50%. Almost 40% of those kids are with relatives and the rest are with fictive kin.
But as Woody’s story illustrates, it can be challenging to suddenly ask a relative to take in children. Foster families go through a complex licensing process that requires them to apply and prepare their home for potential foster children. But kin are usually not previously licensed.
In the pursuit to place more children with kin, DCF has tried to remove friction points to ensure that kin can say yes.
“As long as the individual passes a Child Protective Services check, a state police check and a home inspection that day,” a child can be placed in a kinship home immediately, Mysogland said. Then, the agency will do a lengthier fingerprint check, a longer home study, and help the family comply with licensing requirements. When possible, DCF licenses the family. The ultimate goal is always for children to be reunited with their parents.
DCF also tries to provide families with whatever else they might need to support the child through ConnectiKIN, a voluntary program run through Wheeler Health and Family Centered Services of CT that connects kin with DCF resources they may need.
“They haven’t asked to do this, and they all of a sudden have kids in their home,” said Sharon Pendleton-Ponzani, the head of foster care services for the Wheeler Clinic, who helps run the ConnectiKIN program. “They may not have beds, they may not have cribs, they may not have enough food, they may not have a car seat.”
ConnectiKIN, also called C-KIN, facilitates getting kin those items, along with access to services from DCF like therapy or babysitting.
Pendleton-Ponzani said some of the biggest snags tend to be logistical — how to get a child picked up for school at a different bus stop, for example.
“You fill out the paperwork, you’ve gotta get on the list, those types of things can’t immediately be solved. They take a couple of days, and that’s hard for families,” she said. To that end, C-KIN provides what they call “kinship navigators” to help a family fill out needed forms and resolve the issue.
It’s part of DCF’s effort to ensure more families say “yes” to caring for kin, if the obstacle standing in their way can be overcome.
“If we have a family that has raised their hand to say, ‘Yeah, I will care for this child,’ we will literally do everything we can to support them to make that placement work and make it successful,” Mysogland said.
Mysogland also said that a history of interactions with law enforcement does not preclude a family from taking in kin.
“For example, if you in your past maybe have been arrested for shoplifting, maybe motor vehicle violations, other somewhat minor criminal charges, we can take a look at that,” Mysogland said. If DCF determines that a past incident would not impact a person’s ability to safely parent a child, they can waive that licensing requirement.
Some foster parents, like Doris A. Maldonado Mendez, say they have mixed feelings about the emphasis that DCF has put on these placements. Maldonado Mendez, who fostered and adopted children, is concerned about the agency’s willingness to overlook criminal charges, for example, when placements are made.
“Ultimately, bloodlines or the same zip code does not make for the ideal placement — especially once the child is settled and receiving services,” she said via email. Maldonado Mendez wrote that while she is by no means against kinship care, the emphasis on kin has left non-kin families feeling “dismissed, sidelined, and silenced.”
Children in her care as a foster parent were moved to kinship placements and Maldonado Mendez, who has adopted foster children, said she was left to help them “reconcile the contradictions of a system that prioritizes placement over permanence.”
Mysogland said that for DCF it’s sometimes necessary to move a child as a kinship placement is prioritized, because the agency believes it’s ultimately in the best interest of the child to be with kin. At times, that placement cannot be found at the moment of an emergency removal.
At the same time, Mysogland said he did not want to diminish the role of foster parents. “We value all foster parents in our system and truly appreciate their dedication and commitment to our children. We hope that if a child transitions out of their home, they remain in contact with that child and their family given the significant role they have played in their life,” he said.
A federal rule change in 2023 has allowed states to come up with a different set of licensing requirements for kinship caregivers. Historically, many states placed children with kin on a two-tiered system, in which kin did not receive the same maintenance payments as other foster families. While kin were preferred, they were not adequately resourced.
But according to Mysogland, Connecticut has always required kin to get licensed, and has always compensated them equal to non-kin foster families. Still, licensure has proved to be a barrier, because some kin who would otherwise be willing to take in a child don’t want to go through the process.
As Connecticut attempts to move its kinship care numbers higher, researchers say that Washington State is among the places that can serve as an example. Washington’s child welfare agency has aggressively worked to improve kinship numbers, which stand at around 59% as of 2025, and they have taken advantage of the 2023 federal rule change to create a separate licensing track for kinship caregivers, which streamlines the process and requires less paperwork.
“For foster care we had about 78 rules you had to do, and fill out all this paperwork, and an application, and we narrowed it down to about half, so 30 rules,” said Ruben Reeves, assistant secretary for learning for the Washington Department of Children, Youth and Families. Reeves said the department still conducts home studies and background checks on all placements, but it is trying to remove non safety-related barriers to ensure families can get foster support payments.
Connecticut’s DCF is actively considering a similar option for its future kinship placements, according to Mysogland. Currently, DCF allows kin to take in child relatives in emergency situations, as in Woody’s case, while they apply for a license — as long as background checks and a walkthrough of the home are completed. And while Connecticut has not yet created a separate type of license for kin, DCF can exempt these families from some of the typical requirements — that a bedroom must have a window, for example, or that it be used for sleeping purposes only.
When Woody’s nieces and nephews came to her home in the emergency placement, she went through that licensure process, including a medical course to manage one child’s diabetes and a CPR course. But to Woody, it wasn’t a meaningful barrier.
“The process was super simple,” Woody said. She said that DCF spread out the requirements over a few months so as not to overwhelm her.
The main issue that frustrated Woody, she said, was workforce turnover at DCF. During the first four months of the children’s placement, she went through five caseworkers. “That was a huge challenge, because you didn’t really know who you were going to get,” she said. “One of them we were assigned for two weeks. I never even met him. It was insane.”
Woody’s license only pertained to the specific children in her care. But now that her nieces and nephews are back with her sister, Woody is planning to become licensed to foster other children in the future, children who don’t have the option of going with kin.
After taking in family members, she has an appreciation for why a kinship care placement, when possible, is a powerful tool for children and caregivers.
“I knew the boys. I knew where their challenges were, where their struggles were. Even if I hadn’t seen them in three years, they still were the same kids that I knew and loved all those years. So I knew what they were going through. I knew what to expect. I knew their medical history,” Woody said.
The younger kids, who Woody hadn’t met, were more of a challenge at first. “I still had to get to know them but once I did, I fell in love all over again with them,” she said. “Even after being back with their mom, they have a relationship with me. And they know that I’m always going to be there because I’m their aunt.”
When the kids left after a year, Woody sent her son to visit some relatives in Georgia. She knew how hard it would be for him to see their house — once full of cribs, toys, laughter and tears — empty and silent.
Recently her nieces and nephews came for a visit. “My nephews were like, ‘Wow, the house looks so empty.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, you guys built it. You made it vibrant.’”
Woody had her struggles, both during the placement and after. But she has no regrets about saying yes when she got the call.
“The only thing that matters is those kids, and whether you have them for six months, or you have them a year or two years, they’re not going to forget that,” she said.
Laura Tillman is a reporter for The Connecticut Mirror (https://ctmirror.org/ ). Copyright 2025 © The Connecticut Mirror.