Alabama Kinship Care vs Foster Care Benefits: What's the Difference?
Same Child, Different Benefits — Depending on How You Got Here
Two grandmothers in Alabama can each be raising a grandchild full-time, and one receives several hundred dollars a month in support while the other gets $165. The difference isn't need or deservingness. It's the legal pathway that brought the child into their care.
Alabama's benefit system assigns different programs based on the caregiving arrangement. Understanding which bucket your situation falls into tells you exactly which money and services are available.
Informal Kinship Care
You're raising the child without any court order, DHR involvement, or formal custody. The parents may have asked you to take the child, or circumstances (addiction, incarceration, illness) made it happen without a plan.
What's available:
- Child-only Family Assistance (TANF) — $165/month for one child, your income excluded
- SNAP for the household
- Medicaid and ALL Kids for the child — your income typically excluded if you don't claim the child as a tax dependent
- WIC for children under 5
- Child care subsidies (subject to the May 2026 waitlist, with TANF – Other Relative priority)
- Alabama Cares respite and support (if you're 55+)
What's not available:
- Foster care board payments
- KinGAP (Kinship Guardianship Assistance)
- Foster-care-based direct certification for free school meals; children receiving SNAP or Family Assistance can still be directly certified for free meals
Probate Guardianship
You petitioned a probate court and received a formal guardianship order. This is a private legal action — DHR is not involved.
What's available: Everything available to informal caregivers, plus:
- Full legal authority for medical consent, school enrollment, and property decisions
- Stronger standing for benefit applications (no questions about relationship proof)
What's still not available:
- Foster care board payments
- KinGAP
Probate guardianship gives you legal authority, but it doesn't increase the financial support amount. The child-only FA grant stays at $165 for one child regardless of whether you have a guardianship order.
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DHR Foster Care Placement (Kinship Foster)
DHR placed the child with you through a juvenile court dependency order. You completed foster care licensing, and the child is in DHR legal custody while living in your home.
What's available:
- Foster care maintenance board payments (rates vary; negotiated with DHR — typically higher than the FA grant)
- Medicaid for the child automatically
- KinGAP eligibility after six consecutive months of licensed placement, if DHR determines reunification and adoption are not appropriate
- Direct certification for free school meals
- Education and Training Vouchers and the Fostering Hope Scholarship (for youth exiting care after age 16)
The trade-off: DHR holds legal custody. You handle daily care, but major decisions (medical consent, placement changes) go through DHR. This ends when the court transfers guardianship to you — at which point KinGAP payments replace the foster board rate.
The Gap in the Middle
The biggest frustration for kinship families is the gap between informal care and foster care. A grandmother who took in her grandchild voluntarily — without DHR involvement — gets $165/month in child-only FA. A grandmother whose grandchild was formally removed and placed with her through the child welfare system receives foster board payments that can be several times higher.
Same family structure, vastly different financial support, based entirely on the legal pathway.
The Alabama Financial Help for Kinship Caregivers guide maps every benefit available under each arrangement type, so you're not leaving money unclaimed because you didn't realize your situation qualified.
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