Kinship Care Project - Kinship Care Bill Passed!

HB 4718, An Act Relative to Caregiver Medial and Educational Consent, was recently passed by the legislature and signed into law by Governor Patrick on January 14, 2009. The legislation allows parents to authorize a caregiver, e.g. a relative or other person providing full-time care of a child, to consent to medical treatment and to educational decisions on behalf of the child. Many people in Massachusetts provide primary care for children who are not their own, including grandparents, aunts, uncles and adult siblings. Many of these child care arrangements are informal, with the caregiver having no formal legal relationship to the child. Some of these caregivers face barriers to obtaining educational and medical services for the children in their care because they lack a court order that grants them legal custody or guardianship that would give them the legal right to request or accept such services on behalf of the child. The Act does not divest parents of any rights, but gives caregivers concurrent authority with the parents.

The Massachusetts Appleseed Center was instrumental in identifying the problems that arise from kinship caregivers' lack of legal authority over children in educational and medical settings and helped to initiate this legislation. Using our field research including interviews with school personnel and health care providers as well as kinship caregivers, we identified the problem, put together a working group and developed policy recommendations. Our legal research was presented in a law review article, "Kinship Care Reform: A Proposal for Consent Legislation in Massachusetts," Massachusetts Law Review, Vol. 23 (Summer 2002): 23-32. We drafted and promoted the bill.

We are grateful to the working group who assisted Massachusetts Appleseed in this important public advocacy effort. In particular, we extend our thanks to Massachusetts Families for Kids (Kim Stevens), the Probate and Family Court (Ilene Mitchell), and Volunteer Lawyers Project (Lynn Girton).

Click here to download the full text of the bill.