Betty Cornelius was overjoyed when an Ontario judge awarded her full custody of her granddaughter following a two-year court battle.
Her son and his girlfriend had had a child while both were addicted to opioids. All of Cornelius’s retirement savings — about $25,000 — went to fighting for custody of the child.
“It gave us peace of mind,” said Cornelius, who was granted full custody with her then-husband in the early ’90s. Cornelius, now 71, was in her mid-40s at the time. “We knew that they couldn’t come and take her.”
In 2022, there were nearly 16,000 children across Canada being raised by relatives. Called “kinship families,” these families most commonly involve grandparents raising grandchildren.
These relatives never expected to be raising another family member’s child, says Christina Campbell, a social worker on the Kinship Care Help Line at the charity Parent Support Services Society of BC. They voluntarily take in the children, even though it puts a heavy burden on them. Many, like Cornelius, spend all their savings fighting for custody and raising the kids.
“We didn’t plan for braces and graduations and another Sweet 16 party, or all those little things,” said Cornelius, who is also founder and president at CANGRANDS, a support group for kinship caregivers. “If it’s $100, that’s $100 you hadn’t planned on.”
“They’re in a crisis … the majority of [kinship families] are in poverty,” said Campbell. In 2003, 39 per cent of children in kinship care lived below the poverty level in the US, compared with 13 per cent of children in non-kin foster care.
Yet, in Canada, kinship caregivers must navigate a complicated web of child welfare rules and tax laws that make it difficult for them to access support for the kids in their charge.
‘Significant health issues’
Relatives looking to become kinship caregivers have three options: they can informally become a child’s caregiver, they can register as a kinship caregiver with their province’s child welfare agency or they can seek full custody of the child through the courts.
Most relatives choose to never formally register as kinship caregivers, says Susan Burke, an associate professor at the University of Northern BC whose work focuses on kinship care.
Registering with child welfare agencies is intrusive and strenuous, says Cornelius.
Before Cornelius was awarded custody of her granddaughter, Ontario’s Children’s Aid Society had wanted to move the child into foster care for about six months while it determined whether Cornelius could become the girl’s full-time caregiver, she says.
“Who’s going to allow their grandbabies to go into foster care, even for one night or for one month?” said Cornelius, who runs a private Facebook group for kinship caregivers. “The unfairness is just ridiculous. And when you tell people, they’re shocked.”
“Sometimes children need to be placed in temporary foster care while the child welfare agency seeks and approves kin, however this is not always required,” the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies told Canadian Affairs in an emailed statement.
Other relatives fear that child services may deem them to be inadequate to serve as kinship caregivers — which could result in a child permanently ending up in foster care.
But relatives who do not register as kinship caregivers are not eligible for provincial funding, such as monthly stipends to offset the costs of raising a child.
“They would rather go without supports often and suffer and struggle … because of that fear that the children might be removed or that some other intervention will end up negatively impacting them and the children,” said Burke.
Unregistered kinship caregivers are, however, eligible for federal tax relief and the Canada Child Benefit. The benefit is calculated based on a caretaker’s income, with the maximum funding available being $649 a month for children under six, and $548 for children aged six to 17.
These amounts are not enough to cover expenses for many kinship caregivers, many of whom reduce their work hours or quit their jobs to care for children, says Burke.
“[The children] tend to have significant health issues,” she said.
Cornelius’s granddaughter, for example, was born with fetal alcohol syndrome and suffers from a spinal injury due to having been abused by another family member as a child.
“They tend to be living in poverty,” Burke added. “Even the families … that are getting the optimal amount of funding … are often still struggling financially.”
‘Everyday stressed’
Kinship caregivers who do register with their province’s child welfare organization are eligible for funding that varies by province.
In B.C., for example, registered caregivers receive a monthly payment called “provincial maintenance” that amounts to $1,535 for children under 12, and $1,712 for children between 12 and 19, says Campbell. In Saskatchewan, registered caregivers receive $710 for children under five, rising to $946 for children aged 16 and over. Rates are higher in northern parts of the province.
Campbell believes these amounts are not adequate, given the prevalence of physical and mental disabilities and mental health conditions in children of kinship families.
“All children in kinship care have experienced trauma. It’s significant, and we don’t have fulsome mental health support,” she said. Provincial funding “doesn’t account for the counselling, or the mental health, or the psycho-educational assessment because they’re not doing well at school.”
In addition, registering with a province makes a kinship family ineligible to claim the child as a dependent on their income taxes. It also makes them ineligible for the Canada Child Benefit, says Burke.
“[The Canada Child Benefit is] intended to help the most vulnerable children in our society, the ones who are living in the greatest degrees of poverty … And yet this whole population of kinship caregivers isn’t even able to apply,” she said. “There’s a lack of fairness there.”
Faye Robinson, 55, and her husband take care of 14 grandkids born to Faye’s five children — all of whom have struggled with opioid addiction. The couple, who are members of the Cote First Nation in Saskatchewan, are full-time caregivers to all of the kids but are registered kinship parents for only nine of them.
They spend more than $3,500 a month on food for the family. After all other necessary expenses, “there’s nothing left in the end,” Robinson says. She has launched a gofundme campaign to buy a van large enough to fit the whole family.
Unlike foster-care parents, kinship families do not receive additional funding to support other expected child-care expenses, such as school supplies and clothing. In Cornelius’s Facebook group for kinship families, grandparents worry about affording their child’s next need.
“These grandmas right now are so stressed with back-to-school shopping … they live every day stressed,” said Cornelius. “Very few of them can afford to do this.”
Those that do try to get additional funding need to advocate for themselves, says Cassandra Strain, a kinship caregiver to three nieces who have had disabilities since infancy.
“It’s not easy because sometimes it requires writing letters to ministers, going to see your member of the Legislative Assembly or member of Parliament or various service providers in the community to try to get the needs met of these kids,” says Strain, who is also a social worker on the Kinship Care Help Line in B.C.
“It is such hard work.”
Personal sacrifices
Kinship caregivers’ third option is to seek full custody or guardianship of a child through the courts. Custody makes a kinship parent the sole, legally recognized caregiver of a child, while guardianship allows the birth parent to maintain some rights to the child.
While custodians and guardians are eligible for federal tax relief and the Canada Child Benefit, in some provinces — such as B.C. and Saskatchewan — they become ineligible for the provincial funding that is available to registered kinship caregivers.
“Over the years, always, every year, I meet families who [have been advised] to seek guardianship under the Family Law Act,” said Campbell. “And that’s devastating, because then they don’t get any [financial] support. It’s really hard on families to survive financially.”
Cornelius pursued full custody of her granddaughter so she would have the stability of growing up in one home.
“She has turned into a beautiful adult woman who I’m proud of,” says Cornelius of her granddaughter, who is now 31.
But it has come at a cost. “When I got my granddaughter, the dentist said to me ‘You need two bridges and a crown,’ and I said ‘not going to happen,’” Cornelius said to illustrate the types of personal sacrifices she has made. “And it’s never happened.”
“And I would do it again tomorrow,” said Cornelius. “I would do it again tomorrow.”
