When Dr. Tyreasa Washington was a practicing social worker, she dealt with many children who didn’t live with their parents.
Sometimes they had been placed by the state into traditional foster care. Sometimes they were living with a relative or perhaps a godparent who had a family connection, an arrangement called “kinship care” that is more common than traditional foster care.
Children in kinship care, Washington noticed, bounced between foster homes less often, had more stable lives and generally better prospects — though they still face challenges that other children don’t.
Now, as an associate professor of social work, Washington is studying kinship care among African American families.