There has been an 18% increase in kinship care from 2000 to 2010, says a new report. The report, “Stepping Up For Kids,” by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, says that children who can’t be raised by their own parents do better in kinship care than in the regular foster care system. (Go to bit.ly/aecreport to see the report.)

Represent writer Marlo Scott’s experience supports the report’s findings. He went to live with a stranger when he was 5. He writes of his first foster parent, “She never helped me with my homework, or even bothered to ask if I had any assignments. She also never took me shopping for new clothes, or even a haircut.”

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When he moved to his grandparents’ place a year later, Marlo writes, “Every night we watched a movie together in the family room…. My grandmother always managed to help me understand my homework. She also let me call my mother every night.”

As the Casey report puts it, “Kinship care helps children maintain familial and community bonds and provides them with a sense of stability, identity, and belonging, especially during times of crisis. Kinship care also helps to minimize the trauma and loss that accompany parental separation.”

Most kinship care living arrangements happen without the government getting involved, but as of 2010 there were 104,000 children in kinship care as part of the state-supervised foster care system. That means those relatives get the money and supports that other foster parents get.

But some kinship caregivers don’t know what federal and state help they’re entitled to. The report recommends that kinship-care families get more information, and more money. Last year, New York State started subsidized kinship guardianship, which gives money and decision-making power to caregiver relatives.

It only makes sense to keep kids with their families if a loving relative is available. As Marlo puts it, “If you’re placed with a total stranger, that relationship may be turbulent because you and the foster parent have to live with each other while you’re trying to figure each other out. Kinship care can benefit children more, because they are with familiar faces.”